The Stillwater Tragedy | Page 4

of whom were skilled machinists. The wound was an inch and
three quarters in length and very deep at the extremities; in the middle
in scarcely penetrated to the cranium. So peculiar a cut could not have
been produced with the claw part of a hammer, because the claw is
always curved, and the incision was straight. A flat claw, such as is
used in opening packing-cases, was suggested. A collection of the
several sizes manufactured was procured, but none corresponded with
the wound; they were either too wide or too narrow. Moreover, the cut
was as thin as the blade of a case-knife.
"That was never done by any tool in these parts," declared Stevens, the
foreman of the finishing shop at Slocum's.
The assassin or assassins had entered by the scullery door, the simple

fastening of which, a hook and staple, had been broken. There were
footprints in the soft clay path leading from the side gate to the stone
step; but Mary Hennessey had so confused and obliterated the outlines
that now it was impossible accurately to measure them. A half-burned
match was found under the sink,--evidently thrown there by the
burglars. It was of a kind known as the safety-match, which can be
ignited only by friction on a strip of chemically prepared paper glued to
the box. As no box of this description was discovered, and as all the
other matches in the house were of a different make, the charred
splinter was preserved. The most minute examination failed to show
more than this. The last time Mr. Shackford had been seen alive was at
six o'clock the previous evening.
Who had done the deed?
Tramps! answered Stillwater, with one voice, though Stillwater lay
somewhat out of the natural highway, and the tramp--that bitter
blossom of civilization whose seed was blown to us from over
seas--was not then so common by the New England roadsides as he
became five or six years later. But it was intolerable not to have a
theory; it was that or none, for conjecture turned to no one in the
village. To be sure, Mr. Shackford had been in litigation with several of
the corporations, and had had legal quarrels with more than one of his
neighbors; but Mr. Shackford had never been victorious in any of these
contests, and the incentive of revenge was wanting to explain the crime.
Besides, it was so clearly robbery.
Though the gathering around the Shackford house had reduced itself to
half a dozen idlers, and the less frequented streets had resumed their
normal aspect of dullness, there was a strange, electric quality in the
atmosphere. The community was in that state of suppressed agitation
and suspicion which no word adequately describes. The slightest
circumstance would have swayed it to the belief in any man's guilt; and,
indeed, there were men in Stillwater quite capable of disposing of a
fellow-creature for a much smaller reward than Mr. Shackford had held
out. In spite of the tramp theory, a harmless tin-peddler, who had not
passed through the place for weeks, was dragged from his glittering
cart that afternoon, as he drove smilingly into town, and would have
been roughly handled if Mr. Richard Shackford, a cousin of the
deceased, had not interfered.

As the day wore on, the excitement deepened in intensity, though the
expression of it became nearly reticent. It was noticed that the lamps
throughout the village were lighted an hour earlier than usual. A sense
of insecurity settled upon Stillwater with the falling twilight,--that
nameless apprehension which is possibly more trying to the nerves than
tangible danger. When a man is smitten inexplicably, as if by a bodiless
hand stretched out of a cloud,--when the red slayer vanishes like a mist
and leaves no faintest trace of his identity,--the mystery shrouding the
deed presently becomes more appalling than the deed itself. There is
something paralyzing in the thought of an invisible hand somewhere
ready to strike at your life, or at some life dearer than your own. Whose
hand, and where is it? Perhaps it passes you your coffee at breakfast;
perhaps you have hired it to shovel the snow off your sidewalk; perhaps
it has brushed against you in the crowd; or may be you have dropped a
coin into the fearful palm at a street corner. Ah, the terrible unseen
hand that stabs your imagination,--this immortal part of you which is a
hundred times more sensitive than your poor perishable body!
In the midst of situations the most solemn and tragic there often falls a
light purely farcical in its incongruity. Such a gleam was unconsciously
projected upon the present crisis by Mr. Bodge, better known in the
village as Father Bodge. Mr. Bodge was stone deaf, naturally stupid,
and had been