Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 2, September 24, 1927

Del Noel and Walt Trowbridge and Jeff Moseby, after the pair had left and the last of the summer people had straggled out, looked at one another and demanded to know how in the name of sin Chet and Boyce were able to get hold of their gossip.

Whitcher, they concluded, must have been making a fool of himself again, somehow — and when he himself ambled in some twenty minutes later they instantly accused him of it.

“Sure, cal’late I was, boys,” he confessed somewhat wearily, his eyes rambling. “Seems t’ me I’m allus a makin’ a fool o’ m’self, lately. I — shucks, I dunno. P’rhaps mebbe I am gittin’ ol’! Sh’u’dn’ ’a’ tol’ Lem Sprague, I s’pose—”

“Tol’ Lem Sprague?”

In unison, literally, this trio of old moss-backs cried out the phrase — cried it out in hoarse and horrified accents.

“Uh-huh... uh-huh,” nodded the sheriff.

“Y’ tol’ Lem Sprague suthin’ ’at were s’posed t’ be private?” Del groaned.

“ ’N y’ f’rgot the fu’st thing he allus does ’s t’ whisper a secret t’ Chet ’n’ Boyce?” chimed in Jeff.

“Fool ’s right ’n’ old ’s right, the Lord knows I’ll say,” was Walt’s contribution.

“I... I did kind o’ think Lem might go ’n’ talk t’ Chet ’n’ Boyce, as a matter o’ fac’,” Whitcher sadly soliloquized, his hand instinctively going to his lip.

“Then... then—”

The postmaster couldn’t put it into words, though — not for a moment or so, at least. Finally, after he and Jeff and Walt had exchanged more helpless glances, Del managed to find speech:

“W’itcher, don’t y’ know y’ jest keep a playin’ ’n’ a playin’ into the han’s o’ Chet ’n’ Boyce. Got a great laugh here, this aft’noon, they did — ’n’ they got a laugh fr’m some o’ them summer people that’s li’ble t’ be voters, w’ot with more New York folk claimin’ res’dence on account o’ Maine havin’ no State income tax.

“Said, Boyce did, ’at w’en his brother Ned licked y’ f’r the office o’ sheriff they was another oc’pation y’ c’d take up t’ make a livin’ at. That same oc’pation, W’itcher, he opined ’ud be actin’ nursemaid t’ flighty flappers, like he put it. He — damn ’em both, they sure got the laughs, the dum young squirts!”

“Yes, sirree, Bob, W’itcher,” added Walt Trowbridge, “they was no cause t’ give ’em that openin’ ’n’—”

But Whitcher Bemis, his hands on his sides, had thrown back his head and was chuckling — a free and hearty chuckle that graduated into a gale of joyous laughter:

“Ju... Judas Priest, boys,” he got out, “but didn’ Chet ’n’ Boyce go ’n’ earn a laugh? Lawsy, tickles me, it does, thinkin’ o’ me playin’ nursemaid! Shucks, fellers, ain’t you ol’-timers got no sense o’ humor?”

They didn’t seem to have — they most assuredly and decidedly didn’t give any evidence of it. With their jaws dropping and their eyes plumb and plain disgusted, the worthy and loyal trio gazed at the man they had championed for years as if nothing could be said or done.

Lugubriously, they shook their heads — until Jeff, always the most inquisitive, thought to get some sort of reward:

“W’ot is all this trouble ’bout Amos Crocker ’n’ his gal Essie, anyways, W’itcher?” he asked. “Couldn’ learn no real noos fr’m Chet ’n’ Boyce!”

Mr. Bemis laughed again, although this time there was a certain slyness in the sound of it:

“Shucks, no, fellers,” he stated, “y’ don’t ’xpec’ me t’ make the same mistake twice, do y’? Made a fool o’ m’self talkin’ t’ Chet ’n’ Boyce, didn’ I? Yeah, Del, gimme m’ mail ’n’ lemme traipse ’long home!”

Del complied grimly, for he and the others knew from long experience that when Whitcher Bemis elected to withhold information nothing in the world could possibly pry it loose from him.

III

Whitcher himself, however, surely received further information anent Essie Crocker. He received it, indeed, at an exceedingly early hour the next day — at, to be precise, somewhere pretty close to three o’clock in the morning.

Amos, at that time, drove up to the sheriff’s house and began wildly to honk his horn. After Bemis had responded, opening the door in his voluminous nightgown, the hardware man from East Chatham unbridled his woe:

“It wasn’t them damn college boys, after all, Whitcher,” he excitedly wailed. “It... it was them damn road workers! Probably some of that crew that’s fixing the road down to Gorham. Always said they looked suspicious, with their black eyes and polite smiles. Always thought this foreign labor—”

He broadened out into a rather plausible New England attack on the Latin, then, reverting in his nervous condition to the idiom of the backwoods:

“Cuss ’em, Whitcher, a bad lot, they be. An’... an’ here I been blamin’ my dear little Essie f’r... f’r—”

He blubbered, then — positively blubbered — and before he could at all master himself the sheriff had to repeat several times in his soothing voice:

“Shucks, Amos — shucks! Git holt o’ y’rself, ’n’ come on ’nside ’n’ tell a body ’bout it all!”

After they were in the house, and the gasoline lamp was lighted on the kitchen table with a red and white checked cloth, Amos was prevailed upon to explain more fully: