The Death of Mr. Barker

I

GEORGE was in the barber shop, being shaved, when the paper came out. Andy was shaving him, and he was lying back with his eyes closed, feeling the razor move gently and warmly across his face, and feeling the firm, expert pressure of Andy’s fingers on his jaws and cheek. There was nothing George liked more than being shaved by a first-rate barber. It gave him a sense of comfort and affluence he could get from nothing else. Sometimes when he was broke he would stand outside the shop, watching other men getting shaved inside, and envy them. He would stand there sometimes for a long while until people began to notice him, and then he would move away.

He could n’t afford to get one of Andy’s shaves more than two or three times a month, so when he did he made the most of it. Once Mr. Barker had come in while he was in the chair, and afterwards had lectured him on thrift and how a man who wasted his money in small ways when he was young would waste it in large ways when he was older and wind up in the gutter. Mr. Barker was full of such lectures, on thrift and sobriety and gratitude and similar matters. When Mr. Barker lectured, George would simply stand still and listen, his head down, never saying a word. There was plenty on his mind he wanted to say, but as Mr. Barker was his employer, in a manner of speaking, and had done a great deal for him, he could n’t very well say it. So he just listened, and after Mr. Barker walked away he would look after him, boiling inside, as much because of his enforced silence as because of what Mr. Barker had said.

Just before the paper came out Andy was talking of the local baseball team.

’Yessir,’ Andy said, ’What that team needs is some new blood. Some of the fellows on it now was playing on it fifteen years ago, when it was started. I’d think a husky young fellow like you would go out for it.’

George did n’t say anything, and Andy laid a hot steaming towel on his face and patted it down carefully.

‘Mr. Barker’s always been against it,’ George said finally. ‘I started to go out for it one time and then he said he was against it.’ His voice, coming through the hot, thick towel, was muffled.

‘That’s too bad,’ Andy said. ‘Yessir, that’s too bad. Mr. Barker is n’t much of a sport, I know, but it seems to me he goes a little too far in thinking a fellow should work all the time and all that.’

Andy took the towel off and began massaging George’s face expertly. Just then the newsboys started hollering outside. They were a couple of blocks away from the shop and you could n’t understand what they were hollering.

But extras came out so seldom in Clarendon that you could be sure it was something important.

Andy and George listened for a minute. Then Andy went on with the massage. No one was waiting in the shop and he took his time about it. At certain hours, as on Saturday afternoon late, there would be people waiting and Andy would have to hurry. It was n’t so much fun getting a shave then, so George never did.

‘Well,’ Andy said, ‘we’ll have to get a paper to find out what it’s all about. Matter of fact, these boys don’t want you to get what they’re hollering. If you did, they would n’t sell so many.’

‘I guess that’s right,’ George said. He had his eyes open now and he was staring at the ceiling. The ceiling was a dead yellow color. A fly was walking across it, looking odd in its upside-down position. The fly walked very slowly, as if it had all the time in the world and no particular business on hand. It was a big fly, black, with strong fuzzy legs.

Just then the boys came in. Not the newsboys, but George’s friends. One of them had a paper, and he was puffing as if he had run a long way very quickly.

They all began to talk at once, and finally Andy had to say, ‘If one of you would talk at a time we might be able to figure out what you’re saying.’

George did n’t say anything. He was sitting up in the chair now, a little lather still around his ears and under his chin, looking at them.

The one with the paper stepped forward. There were big black headlines across the front page. They gave the paper something of the look of a metropolitan afternoon daily, even though the Argus had only about 1600 subscribers and it was said that a third of them had n’t paid a nickel in years.

‘They found old man Barker dead this morning,’ the boy with the paper said. ‘Somebody killed him.’

Andy put the towel down, not as neatly as he usually did, and took the paper. He started to read it, then lowered it so George could read too. The Argus had spread itself—afterwards people said they could n’t remember when it had handled a story in as big a way before. There was the headline, and a picture of Mr. Barker, — an old-fashioned picture, showing him in a tight, high-buttoned black suit with a wing collar, looking twenty years younger than he was at the time of his death, — and a three-column box head and a two-column light-face head. The story took up less space than the heads. It simply said that the groceryman had gone out to Mr. Barker’s house in the morning to deliver some groceries. Nobody answered his knock, and he noticed that the back door was open, an unusual thing. He went inside, and finally, after looking around, went upstairs. He found Mr. Barker in his bedroom with his throat cut. Then he ran out and drove back to town as fast as he could and told the sheriff. The sheriff figured they’d catch the murderer or murderers pretty quickly. Every facility of his office, the sheriff was quoted as saying, was devoted to the case.

Andy smiled when he read that. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that means the sheriff himself and that half-witted deputy who still owes me two bucks for work I did for him last fall when he was chasing after that Smith girl.’

George read the account rather hurriedly. He got out of the chair and picked up the towel Andy had dropped and wiped his face.

‘Well,’ he said. Then he said it again, as if he liked the sound of it. ‘Well.’

‘Who do you think killed him?’ the

boy with the paper asked, and George suddenly noticed that they were all staring at him. That was because he had lived with Mr. Barker. They thought he knew all about Mr. Barker, even to the name of his murderer.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ’I sure don’t know.’

‘ When did you see him last? ’ another boy asked.

‘This morning,’ George said. ‘At about nine o’clock. I came in then and did a little work over at the mill.’

‘This will sure be tough on you,’ the first boy said. ‘With all he’s done for you and all. Maybe you won’t get your law education now.’

‘Sure is tough,’ George said. Then he said politely, ‘Maybe I won’t.’

He went over to the coat rack and got his coat and put it on, brushing off a little dust that was on the collar. He looked in the glass and straightened his tie and wiped off a flake of soap that was still on his ear. He was thinking very hard, but his mind was a little confused. It did n’t work well.

‘Maybe you better go out there,’ the first boy said. ’We’ll drive you out. The sheriff”s there, and he probably wants to see you.’

‘That’s a good idea, now,’ George said. ‘That’s a good idea.’ Then he said, ‘Who do they think did it?’

‘They don’t know,’ the boy said in a disgusted voice. ‘I think maybe it was those niggers that’ve been around town.’

The boy had lived in the South for a while when he was young, and he always said you never could trust a nigger — they’d do anything.

‘Yessir,’ he said now. ‘It might’ve been those niggers. Just like a nigger to do that. Niggers will do anything.’

‘That’s right,’ one of the other boys said. ‘Niggers will do anything.’

George did n’t answer. He drew his coat collar closer about his neck to shut out the cold. Then he said, ‘It’s a funny thing, that, a funny thing. To think that he was all right this morning and now he’s dead.’

‘You never can tell,’ the first boy said. ‘It’s liable to happen to anybody. When you leave home in the morning you don’t know that you’ll ever come back.’

II

They went over to the car and got in. It was an old car, a Ford, with a broken windshield and bent fenders and an almost paintless body. The top was torn so that in rainy weather it afforded no protection at all.

The boy who was driving cranked it a few times and the motor caught. It made a lot of noise. It sounded as if it were liable to fall apart at any minute. But George knew it had been like that for several years and it had never fallen apart yet. The chances were that it would take them out and back all right.

Some people on the street were staring at him. They had never taken any interest in him before, he thought, but the fact that he had lived with a murdered man was enough to make them want to look at him.

The car started and moved quickly down the street. The boy sitting next to George lit a cigarette. Then he offered George one, and George said no by inclining his head. The boy puffed two or three times, then took the cigarette out of his mouth.

The boy said, ‘They’ll get whoever did it, all right. In a small town like this it’s easy to check up on people. Nobody can get away without being noticed. It’s different in a big city.’

‘That’s so,’ George said. ‘In a small town you know everybody, and it’s easy to find out what they’ve been doing. They’ll get them, all right.’

The boy put his cigarette back in his mouth and they did n’t talk any more. The car was passing the cannery, and George remembered the summer he had worked there. Mr. Barker had got him the job. Mr. Barker had believed that a little business experience was invaluable, so he had got him a job in the office. It had been a very dull job. He had added up columns of figures and made long, meaningless entries on yellow ledger sheets and missed all the fun he might have had that summer. He had been paid five dollars a week. The fellow next to him, who did the same work, got thirty dollars a week. But he was a middle-aged man, and he had been working at the cannery for more than twenty years, and those were the things that counted.

The car turned into the road that led to Four Acres, Mr. Barker’s place. It was a narrow, pleasant road, bordered with trees. It had a dirt surface and in the winter it was almost impassable with a car. But the hard rains had n’t come yet, so the surface was still firm. George thought about walking down it this morning. So far as the superficialities were concerned, it was just an ordinary morning. It was a little cold, though the sun was out, and there was some frost. When he passed a farm the men working waved at him and he waved back at them. It was just like any other Friday morning when he came into town and got shaved and enjoyed himself. But on this morning Mr. Barker had died and the whole universe had changed. That was a funny thing. An old man was killed, and the world took on a different look so far as you were concerned.

The boy driving turned around and said, ‘This is the biggest crime that ever happened around here, I guess. The last murder was when that fellow killed that other fellow in the pool hall, and that did n’t amount to much.’

‘That’s right,’ George said. ‘This is a pretty big thing.’

‘You take out the Mayor and Mr. Carson and maybe Judge Grant,’ the boy went on, ‘and Mr. Barker was the biggest man around here. He was a big man in this town. I’ll bet the sheriff’s praying for something to happen. If he does n’t get who did it he might as well begin looking for a new job now.’

‘That’s about the size of it,’ George said.

‘How does it feel?’ the boy asked. ‘I mean, how does it feel when somebody you ’ve been with all the time gets killed suddenly like that? I can’t imagine it.’

‘It’s a funny feeling,’ George said. He wished the boy would stop talking. And then the boy did stop talking, but still he could n’t think very well. He thought of the time Mr. Barker had raked him over the coals for spending twenty dollars he had saved on a new suit, and how he had hated Mr. Barker for a long time after that. Then he had got over hating him. Things of that kind did n’t really make you hate a person — not hate him thoroughly. Other things did. Things which were less tangible and a whole lot more important.

It was a bright afternoon, just a little cold, and there were a few small white clouds in the sky. Most of the farmhouses looked deserted. They passed two men working in a field, and the men stopped long enough to stare, but they did n’t wave. George did n’t remember having seen them before. He thought they were probably some of the men who were always coming through the state looking for a day’s or a week’s or a month’s work. Mr. Barker had never had anything to do with such men. He would n’t hire them, he used to say, for love or money. They were shiftless and you could n’t trust them and they might rob and murder you in your sleep and they did n’t earn their board. Well, now somebody had murdered Mr. Barker and that showed you never could tell.

The boy driving said, ‘When you were studying law you must have read a lot about murders, George. And how they happened and the murderers were caught and all that.‘

‘Yes,’ George said distantly. ‘I’ve read about them. They usually get caught because they ’re careless. They get panicky and want to get away too quick. They leave evidence behind them they did n’t have to leave. That’s how they mostly get caught.’

‘Oh!’ the boy driving said. ‘I guess it’s always some little thing they don’t figure on.’

‘That’s right,’ George said.

They were almost to the place now. They crossed the bridge and he leaned out and saw the little river below, the water dirty and yellow from the paper mill and smelling dankly of chemicals. A long time ago he had fished in the stream, but there were no fish any more. The chemicals had killed them. Once he had spoken of it to Mr. Barker, saying how unfortunate it was that the fish had been killed, and Mr. Barker had said that you could n’t let fish stand in the way of progress. The paper mill was a big thing to Clarendon and it employed a lot of people. Mr. Barker had said he would feel that way about it even if he was n’t a director of the mill and a big stockholder.

A half mile farther on, the road turned and he could see the house. It was a big house, painted yellow, with a cupola at the top. He remembered a joke he had heard in school, about a boy who boasted of the cupola on his house, and another boy said that was nothing — his house had a mortgage on it. It did n’t seem funny now, though it had then.

Ill

They turned into the private road and he saw the sheriff’s car, a new dark blue Ford with a gilt shield on the side. They stopped behind it and got out. George got out first and walked toward the house. He did n’t see anyone. But before he reached it the sheriff came through the front door and stood on the porch waiting for him.

The sheriff was a tall, fat man, with a pleasant, loud laugh and two chins and cold eyes. He had quite a reputation in the state because he had once been instrumental in arresting three bank bandits who had posed in Clarendon as drummers for a fictitious hardware concern.

George spoke first. He said, ‘I just heard about it, Sheriff.’

‘The paper out?’ the sheriff said. He was chewing a straw, and the long yellow end of it hung down almost to the bottom of his vest. It made him look the perfect picture of a rustic in his Sunday clothes.

‘Yes,’George said. ‘Just out.’ Then he said, ‘I can’t believe it yet — I mean about him being killed.’

‘No?’ the sheriff said in a polite, disinterested voice. ‘We was wondering where the housekeeper is — Mrs. Jones. We can’t find her anywhere.’

‘She’s away at her brother’s, in Blake,’ George said. ‘She went a couple of days ago. He’s dying.’

The sheriff took the straw out of his mouth and looked at it carefully, as if it had some strange significance. Then he said, ‘Who was doing the cooking?’

‘Mr. Barker and I did it,’ George said. ‘He was going to get somebody and then he thought it would be too much trouble just for a short time. He said that even if he was fairly prosperous he was n’t above getting a meal for himself. Then we ate in town at the grill a time or two. He was coming in to eat there to-night.’

‘I get the idea,’ the sheriff said. He took a cigar out of his pocket and bit off the end. He threw the straw away. The cigar was thick and long and mottled. He always smoked the same kind, and the cigar-stand fellow in the Hotel Clarendon kept them just for him. They were three for twenty-five cents, and the sheriff said he’d never had a two-bit cigar he liked better.

‘Well, it looks like a pretty tough one,’ the sheriff said. He smoked his cigar very carefully and slowly, with great relish. The smoke puffed gently out of his mouth while he talked. ‘A pretty tough one. But I guess it will come out all right.’

‘I hope so,’ George said.

‘Sure,’ the sheriff said. ‘We all hope so.’ He looked as if he were about to deliver an oration on the dead man, but he did n’t. He said, ‘Maybe you ought to come in and see him — if you want to.’

George did n’t answer for a time. Then he said, slowly, ‘All right.’

He went past the sheriff and into the house. Strangely, everything was precisely as it had been when he had left in the morning. The clock was still ticking, an hour and twenty minutes slow, and the hole was still in the middle of the Brussels carpet, and the stiff leather-backed chairs were in the same position. Everything was clean, without dust. He had done the dusting yesterday afternoon, Mr. Barker had told him to. When he had protested, Mr. Barker had said that if he was too proud to do a little work and keep a house clean he was n’t worth much. So he had done the dusting.

The sheriff was just behind him. The sheriff said, ‘Something happened to the morgue wagon, so they could n’t take him away. They’ll be out pretty soon. It’s a mess. These knife cases always are. When you carve a man up with a knife it always makes a mess.’

‘That’s right,’ George said. Then he said, ‘I wonder why they did it with a knife.’

The sheriff took the cigar out of his mouth and looked at the end of it. He knocked the ash off delicately. It fell gently on to the carpet and splattered so that a space inches square was sparsely covered with gray flakes. George thought, ‘That would make Mr. Barker pretty sore if he knew about it.’

‘Well,’ the sheriff said, ‘I don’t know.’

George started slowly up the stairs. He stopped at the landing and said, ‘Where is he?’ and the sheriff said, ‘In his bedroom; did n’t you read the paper?’ and they went on.

The sheriff had a heavy step. George kept listening to it. The sheriff put his feet down in a funny way. You heard one foot strike and then there was a hesitation before the other foot followed. A crippled man would make a sound like that. Every once in a while, too, the sheriff drew a deep breath, as if the climb were too much for him. He was a fat man, and out of condition.

They reached the top of the stairs and George walked down the hall to the bedroom door. It was cold in the hall; the fires had gone out. Mr. Barker never allowed the fires to go out. He was especially particular about them. But of course in this instance he could n’t do anything.

The sheriff opened the door, reaching his hand out and taking hold of the knob firmly, turning and pushing it, and they went into the room. It was disheveled, the bed not made, a glass lying in splinters on the green carpet, and a curtain torn, as if a hand had grasped it suddenly and jerked. But George did not notice those things. All he saw was Mr. Barker. Mr. Barker was spread out on the floor against the far wall, fully dressed. He was lying very naturally, his legs a little bent and his eyes closed, and if he had been in bed it would have seemed to a casual onlooker that he was asleep. But if you looked carefully you could see he was n’t asleep. His face was too white and his mouth was open just a little. His expression was one of vague excitement, of halfassimilated surprise. The left side of his shirt was very red, and the floor beside him was red in patches, and the top of his black trousers was stained a dull red-brown color.

George walked across the room and stood beside him. He closed his eyes, and tried to keep from thinking. He made his mind into a yawning blank, in which nothing existed. Only a little hidden corner of his mind was alive, and that was busy listening to the sheriff’s movements, and to the wind on the roof, and to an automobile motor which had suddenly flared into sound outside.

‘Well, that’s him,’ the sheriff said in a bored, far-away voice. He took the cigar from his mouth and stared at it as he had before, and carefully knocked the ash off. The ash fell near Mr. Barker, and a flake of it touched one of his hands, which was outspread, the palm up, the fingers open and pliantlooking.

‘Yes,’ George said. He thought that Mr. Barker had n’t shaved this morning. There was a dark growth of hair across his upper lip and his chin. On Saturdays, sometimes, Mr. Barker would n’t shave at all. Then on Sunday morning he would give himself an extra good shave, going over his face twice. He never got shaved downtown, at a barber shop. He said it was a waste of money, a useless extravagance.

‘Whoever done it done a good job,’ the sheriff said. ‘He sure is dead. I never saw anybody deader. The doctor said he was stabbed three times and any one of them would have been plenty.’

‘Is that so?’ George said. He turned away and crossed to the other side of the room. He looked out of the window. The old Ford was still there, empty. The boys were out wandering around some place. ‘It’s pretty bad, all right,’ he said.

Then he said, ‘Have you got any good leads?’

‘It’s hard to tell yet,’ the sheriff said.

’You have n’t had much time,* George said.

‘No,’ the sheriff said. ‘Well, we might as well go back down now.’

‘All right,’ George said. He went out of the room without looking back, the sheriff following.

IV

They went downstairs and into the living room. George looked at the clock on the mantel. It said fourthirty. He wondered where all the time had gone.

‘Sit down,’ the sheriff said. ‘You might as well sit down.’

George sat down.

‘We’ve been wondering where the knife went to,’ the sheriff said. ‘That’s an important thing. If we knew where the knife was we’d be better off.’

‘Whoever did it probably hid it pretty well,’ George said.

‘Sure,’ the sheriff said. His cigar was almost consumed now, and he looked at it thoughtfully. He rolled it between his fingers, then got up and threw it into the fireplace. He took a fresh one from his vest pocket, bit the end off carefully, and lit it. He took great pains in lighting it, turning the cigar slowly so that the flame touched each side of the tip.

‘But it’s funny how things will turn up sometimes,’ the sheriff said. ‘Sometimes if you hide a thing too carefully it’s not as safe as if you did n’t hide it at all. I mean, the fact you hid it so well may be the reason it’s found.’

‘I don’t get you,’ George said.

‘Well, if you leave something you don’t want found out in the open, nobody’s likely to find it because it’s too easy to see. They’ll look in places where you’d have hid it if you were trying to get rid of it for good.’

‘Oh!’ George said. He thought that the sheriff was a very dull man. Then he began thinking again about this morning. He thought about Mr. Barker. This morning Mr. Barker had been more unpleasant than usual. He had kept talking about all the things he had done for George. He had said that if George ever amounted to anything he could give all the credit to him.

George took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. It was strange how people wanted glory, even reflected glory. He had thought about that a great deal the past few years, because of Mr. Barker. He could imagine the way Mr. Barker would have acted if he, George, ever became successful — became a big lawyer, or perhaps even a Senator. Mr. Barker would have gone around, his chest way out, saying, ‘Well, if it had n’t been for me George Miller never would have amounted to a whoop. It all goes to prove that you can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear if you try hard enough.’

That’s the way he would have talked, George thought.

‘I guess you thought a lot of Mr. Barker,’ the sheriff said. ‘He sure was a good friend to you.’

‘Yes,’ George said.

‘You would n’t find many men who would do as much. I wonder who he left his money to. I guess you came in for part of it.’

‘I don’t know,’ George said.

He thought of what Mr. Barker had said this morning. He had said that George was a lucky fellow, being the offspring of a worthless family, to have someone take an interest in him and work to make him into something. He had said it over and over again, in slightly different words, until George had felt nauseated and had left the table.

‘You know that silver-handled carving set,’ the sheriff said dreamily. ‘ Well, the knife’s gone out of it. Yes, just dropped out of sight. We looked all over and could n’t find it. Looks like he was finished with his own carving knife.’

‘Is that so?’ George said.

The sheriff went on, ‘Think of all the birds and steaks and things he’s carved up with that knife, never thinking that some day he was going to get carved up with it himself. It’s a funny thing.’

‘Anybody coming in after him would have noticed it,’ George said. ‘It was right there in the open. Maybe somebody came in to steal something and Mr. Barker caught him at it.’

‘That would n’t explain him being upstairs,’ the sheriff said.

George did n’t say anything for a minute. He looked down at the carpet. Then he bent over and flicked away a little speck of ash. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s right. Unless he went up there and died there.’

‘He died right away,’ the sheriff said. ‘And there is n’t any blood down here. He bled a lot.’

‘That’s right,’ George said. He stood up. ‘I think I might as well go back to town. I’ll see you later on.’

‘Wait awhile and I’ll take you in,’ the sheriff said. ‘ I’m just waiting for a fellow I sent to do something for me. He’ll be right along.’

George started to say no, then sat down again without speaking. He sat there with his mind a dead gray blank, looking at the sheriff’s big dark cigar which was half gone now.

V

After about ten minutes the front door opened and the deputy sheriff came in. He walked over to the sheriff and said, ‘You were right, Bob. Only it was n’t in the water. It fell on a stone and it was lying there, right beside the bridge. It did n’t even get wet.’

George looked at the knife. He had seen it a thousand times. Hundreds of times he had sharpened it. It was a good knife, an expensive one, with a fine silver handle and a long thin blade.

The sheriff took it carefully, by the blade, and looked at the handle. He said, in a gentle, far-off voice, ‘What did you kill him for, George?’

George did n’t look at him. He was still looking at the knife, thinking what a fine knife it was. He said, ‘Because I hated him. Because all my life he would have told everybody that I was a no-good, and that whatever I amounted to was due to him. Because I could n’t stand him any longer.’

‘I see, George, I see,’ the sheriff said. He stood up. ‘You did n’t have to tell me, George. But we’d have got it out of you. I felt pretty sure.’ He walked over to the fireplace and threw the cigar into it. There were some crumpled newspapers between the andirons and he threw the cigar to one side, so they would n’t light.

‘Let’s go along, George,’ the sheriff said.

‘All right,’ George said. He felt the deputy’s hand on his arm. ‘That’s why I did it,’ he said. ‘I thought, all of a sudden, that unless I got rid of him I ’d never get anywhere. I thought I’d never let myself get anywhere, because I did n’t want him to have the credit for anything. I thought I could n’t stand listening to him and seeing him any longer. So after he went upstairs I got the knife and went up after him and killed him.’

‘Sure, George,’ the sheriff said. ‘I get the idea.’

They went out of the house, George and the sheriff going first and the deputy following. They got into the sheriff’s new Ford. After George sat down he looked around and saw the boys in their car, a little way off.

‘Are n’t you coming with us?’ one of the boys called.

George called, ‘No, I’m going in with the sheriff.’ Then the sheriff started the car and they drove off. When they passed the boys’ car one of them yelled, ‘Looks like you was a suspect, George! Better be careful or you’ll get a bad reputation!’

All the rest of the boys laughed. George did n’t look back at them. He lit a cigarette and offered one to the deputy, who was sitting next to him. But the deputy said no, he did n’t feel like smoking.