Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town Stephen Leacock (ready to read books TXT) đ
- Author: Stephen Leacock
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Indeed, by nine oâclock Pupkin could be himself seen on the Main Street with a great bandage sideways on his head, pointing out the traces of the robber. Gillis, the caretaker, too, it was known by eight, had not been killed. He had been shot through the brain, but whether the injury was serious or not was only a matter of conjecture. In fact, by ten oâclock it was understood that the bullet from the robberâs second shot had grazed the side of the caretakerâs head, but as far as could be known his brain was just as before. I should add that the first report about the bloodstains and the swamp and the bloodhounds turned out to be inaccurate. The stains may have been blood, but as they led to the cellar way of Netleyâs store they may have also been molasses, though it was argued, to be sure, that the robber might well have poured molasses over the bloodstains from sheer cunning.
It was remembered, too, that there were no bloodhounds in Mariposa, although, mind you, there are any amount of dogs there.
So you see that by ten oâclock in the morning the whole affair was settling into the impenetrable mystery which it ever since remained.
Not that there wasnât evidence enough. There was Pupkinâs own story and Gillisâs story, and the stories of all the people who had heard the shots and seen the robber (some said, the bunch of robbers) go running past (others said, walking past), in the night. Apparently the robber ran up and down half the streets of Mariposa before he vanished.
But the stories of Pupkin and Gillis were plain enough. Pupkin related that he heard sounds in the bank and came downstairs just in time to see the robber crouching in the passage way, and that the robber was a large, hulking, villainous looking man, wearing a heavy coat. Gillis told exactly the same story, having heard the noises at the same time, except that he first described the robber as a small thin fellow (peculiarly villainous looking, however, even in the dark), wearing a short jacket; but on thinking it over, Gillis realized that he had been wrong about the size of the criminal, and that he was even bigger, if anything, than what Mr. Pupkin thought. Gillis had fired at the robber; just at the same moment had Mr. Pupkin.
Beyond that, all was mystery, absolute and impenetrable.
By eleven oâclock the detectives had come up from the city under orders from the head of the bank.
I wish you could have seen the two detectives as they moved to and fro in Mariposaâ âfine looking, stern, impenetrable men that they were. They seemed to take in the whole town by instinct and so quietly. They found their way to Mr. Smithâs Hotel just as quietly as if it wasnât design at all and stood there at the bar, picking up scraps of conversationâ âyou know the way detectives do it. Occasionally they allowed one or two bystandersâ âconfederates, perhapsâ âto buy a drink for them, and you could see from the way they drank it that they were still listening for a clue. If there had been the faintest clue in Smithâs Hotel or in the Mariposa House or in the Continental, those fellows would have been at it like a flash.
To see them moving round the town that dayâ âsilent, massive, imperturbableâ âgave one a great idea of their strange, dangerous calling. They went about the town all day and yet in such a quiet peculiar way that you couldnât have realized that they were working at all. They ate their dinner together at Smithâs cafĂ© and took an hour and a half over it to throw people off the scent. Then when they got them off it, they sat and talked with Josh Smith in the back bar to keep them off. Mr. Smith seemed to take to them right away. They were men of his own size, or near it, and anyway hotel men and detectives have a general affinity and share in the same impenetrable silence and in their confidential knowledge of the weaknesses of the public.
Mr. Smith, too, was of great use to the detectives. âBoys,â he said, âI wouldnât ask too close as to what folks was out late at night: in this town it donât do.â
When those two great brains finally left for the city on the five-thirty, it was hard to realize that behind each grand, impassible face a perfect vortex of clues was seething.
But if the detectives were heroes, what was Pupkin? Imagine him with his bandage on his head standing in front of the bank and talking of the midnight robbery with that peculiar false modesty that only heroes are entitled to use.
I donât know whether you have ever been a hero, but for sheer exhilaration there is nothing like it. And for Mr. Pupkin, who had gone through life thinking himself no good, to be suddenly exalted into the class of Napoleon Bonaparte and John Maynard and the Charge of the Light Brigadeâ âoh, it was wonderful. Because Pupkin was a brave man now and he knew it and acquired with it all the brave manâs modesty. In fact, I believe he was heard to say that he had only done his duty, and that what he did was what any other man would have done: though when somebody else said: âThatâs so, when you come to think of it,â Pupkin turned on him that quiet look of the wounded hero, bitterer than words.
And if Pupkin had known that
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