Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

“Why, the only way Mink could a done it, which was likely why never nobody thought to anticipate it. On the way from the Warden’s office to the gate he jest told the trusty he needed to step into the gentlemen’s room a minute and when they was inside he give the trusty the two hundred and fifty dollars and asked the trusty to hand it back to the Warden the first time the trusty conveniently got around to it, the longer the better after he, Mink, was outside the gate and outen sight, and tell the Warden Much obliged but he had done changed his mind and wouldn’t need it. So there the trusty was: give Mink another hour or two and he would be gone, likely forever, nobody would know where or care. Because I dont care where you are: the minute a man can really believe that never again in his life will he have any use for two hundred and fifty dollars, he’s done already been dead and has jest this minute found it out. And that’s all. I dont—”

“I do,” Stevens said. “Flem told me. He’s in Memphis. He’s too little and frail and old to use a knife or a club so he will have to go to the nearest place he can hope to get a gun with ten dollars.”

“So you told Flem. What did he say?”

“He said, Much obliged,” Stevens said. After a moment he said, “I said, when I told Flem Mink had left Parchman at eight oclock this morning on his way up here to kill him, he said Much obliged.”

“I heard you,” Ratliff said. “What would you a said? You would sholy be as polite as Flem Snopes, wouldn’t you? So maybe it’s all right, after all. Of course you done already talked to Memphis.”

“Tell them what?” Stevens said. “How describe to a Memphis policeman somebody I wouldn’t recognise myself, let alone that he’s actually in Memphis trying to do what I assume he is trying to do, for the simple reason that I dont know what to do next either?”

“What’s wrong with Memphis?” Ratliff said.

“I’ll bite,” Stevens said. “What is?”

“I thought it would took a heap littler place than Memphis not to have nobody in it you used to go to Harvard with.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” Stevens said. He put in the call at once and presently was talking with him: the classmate, the amateur Cincinnatus at his plantation not far from Jackson, who had already been instrumental in getting the pardon through, so that Stevens needed merely explain the crisis, not the situationv height="0em">

“You dont actually know he went to Memphis, of course,” the friend said.

“That’s right,” Stevens said. “But since we are forced by emergency to challenge where he might be, at least we should be permitted one assumption in good faith.”

“All right,” the friend said. “I know the mayor and the commissioner of police both. All you want—all they can do really—is check any places where anyone might have tried to buy a gun or pistol for ten dollars since say noon today. Right?”

“Right,” Stevens said. “And ask them please to call me collect here when—if they do.”

“I’ll call you myself,” the friend said. “You might say I also have a small equity in your friend’s doom.”

“When you call me that to Flem Snopes, smile,” Stevens said.

That was Thursday; during Friday Central would run him to earth all right no matter where he happened to be about the Square. However, there was plenty to do in the office if he composed himself to it. Which he managed to do in time and was so engaged when Ratliff came in carrying something neatly folded in a paper bag and said, “Good mawnin,” Stevens not looking up, writing on the yellow foolscap pad, steadily, quite composed in fact even with Ratliff standing for a moment looking down at the top of his head. Then Ratliff moved and took one of the chairs beyond the desk, the one against the wall, then half rose and placed the little parcel neady on the filing case beside him and sat down, Stevens still writing steadily between pauses now and then to read from the open book beneath his left hand; until presently Ratliff reached and took the morning Memphis paper from the desk and opened it and rattled faintly the turn of the page and after a while rattled that one faintly, until Stevens said,

“Dammit, either get out of here or think about something else. You make me nervous.”

“I aint busy this mawnin,” Ratliff said. “If you got anything to tend to outside, I can set here and listen for the phone.”

“I have plenty I can do here if you’ll just stop filling the damned air with—” He flung, slammed the pencil down. “Obviously he hasn’t reached Memphis yet or anyway hasn’t tried to buy the gun, or we would have heard. Which is all we want: to get the word there first. Do you think that any reputable pawnshop or sporting-goods store that cares a damn about its license will sell him a gun now after the police—”

“If my name was Mink Snopes, I dont believe I would go to no place that had a license to lose for selling guns or pistols.”

“For instance?” Stevens said.