The Belled Ghost

by Hapsburg Liebe

A SMALLISH and very old town, down in the heart of the Cotton Belt. Sandy streets lined with moss-hung liveoaks, and stately white houses retiring modestly behind screens of magnolias and jasmines and honeysuckle-vines. At the center of everything, a weatherbeaten courthouse, with a squat red-brick jail just back of it. In a basement cell that had one barred window set even with the ground level, the Cincinnati Kid waited for his share of the jail's midday meal to be slipped under the door of riveted strap-iron that stood between him and the corridor.

THE BELLED GHOST

By Hapsburg Liebe
Author of “A Fool for Luck,' “The Iron Chalice,” etc.

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THE CINCINNATI KID HAD FIGURED IN MANY A CLOSE DECISION, BUT NEVER IN SUCH A RACE WITH DEATH AS THAT DAY WHEN A LITTLE MUTT DOG STAYED THE SHERIFF'S HAND

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Already he had draped half of the blanket from the cot's outer edge to the floor, in order to hide from view a very small, brown dog of no particular breed, which was tied short underneath. The little mongrel, starved and pitifully lean, had come whining to the window a week before, and Kid Maloney had squeezed it between two of the rusted bars. He looked upon it now as his one real friend, and with it religiously split his meals fifty-fifty. They would take the dog from him if they knew, he feared; therefore he kept it hidden.

Footsteps rang in the dank corridor. Maloney had expected the poky old jailer. Sheriff Mayland Bright appeared at the door.

“Cressy will be away for a week, Kid,” Bright said. Cressy was the poky old jailer. “I'm putting Deputy Spot Higdon in his place, and Spot will be here with your grub before a great while.”

“Aw right,” the Kid replied dully.

The dog lay still behind the blanket. Maloney had been patiently training it to that. Bright tossed a package of cigarettes and a small box of matches into the cell, and was gone before the prisoner could thank him.

“One white guy,” the Cincinnati Kid observed, when the soothing smoke was flowing through his nostrils. “One white guy, sure.”

He never would have said that of Spotswood Higdon—a poor-white name for an aristocratic old colonel—because it had been Higdon that had arrested him. True, the deputy appeared to be intensely sorry for him now, but that didn't help a great deal.

Once more Maloney cursed fate for the scurvy trick she had played with him as the victim. Then he reached under his narrow bed and caressed the dog, which whined its appreciation; then he straightened, and went to the barred window.

They were thoughtful enough to build the new gallows where he couldn't see the work going on. But he could see the shadow of the thing on the high, jailyard fence, late of an afternoon, and that was worse!

Spot Higdon came, at last, and he brought a very good dinner with him. Instead of shoving it under the door, as Cressy had always done, he opened the door and came in with it. The prisoner noted that he wore his six-gun at the point most convenient for making a quick draw.

Without a word, Maloney divided the food into equal parts on the two tin plates, and ate one half without any noticeable relish of it. Then he drank the cup of black coffee. Higdon stood and watched it through soberly. The deputy didn't look well; he was ashen sallow, and there were new lines in his lean face.

Under the cot, the dog whined hungrily!

“What's that?” said Higdon. “You got a dawg in here, Kid?”

“Yep,” Maloney confessed promptly. Why deny it? He thrust the dog's half of the meal under the cot, and the mongrel fell to in noisy gulps. “I sure hope you don't mind, Spot, eh? He's only a little mutt, and lots o' comp'ny; you wouldn't believe it.”

“I guess I don't mind,” drawled Higdon. “Better not let Bright know it, though. Bright's fond o' dawgs, foolish fond, but he's first, last, and all the time a high sheriff, and he'd consider it was ag'inst the jail rules. You see, we had a prisoner here with a dawg once, and it goes out and comes back later with a hack-saw pasted in the thick fur o' its back. The prisoner's wife done it—and that night he sawed out.”

After a little period of silence, the deputy went on. “Well, Kid, you got only three days left now. Anything I can do for you? Any kin-folks you want notified, or anything?”

“I ain't got any relatives, and I sure wouldn't let 'em know about—about this disgrace if I had!” cried Kid Maloney in sudden desperation. “You can do this for me—find the gink that croaked Polk Jennison, and save me!”

A shadow crossed Spot Higdon's face, deepening its new lines, making it seem oddly haggard.

“Son, we've done all we could do. The evidence——”

“Damn the evidence!” half wept the Cincinnati Kid. It was not cowardice. It was youth, to which death in any guise is so insufferable a thing. “I didn't kill Polk Jennison, Spot; I'm tellin' you, I sure didn't do it! Listen to me, Spot——

“You've heard it before, but I want you to hear it again, and you'll notice I tell the same thing all the time. I'm a batam-weight prizefighter up in Cincy, and they call me a wonder; I has hopes for a try at the championship; see? But I get a trimmin' from bein' too cock-sure, and it busts me all up, breaks my heart in small pieces. I can't even look at the friends who've lost every cent they had because o' their faith that I'd plaster k. o. all over the little Memphis pug, and I run away, headin' for New Orleens to begin life all over again; see?

“Well, pretty soon I'm stone broke, and it's the freight trains for little Tommy Maloney—truss-rods and side-door sleepers, you know. A shack with a heart in him as big as a pin-head ditches me here in this hick town o' yours; see? It's rain'in, and I'm lookin' for a place to bunk up in, when I hear a spat from a gat, and then another. One o'clock in the mornin' it is then; get that. I turn a corner at a street lamp, and this Polk Jennison comes tearin' into me. Jennison looks wild; he's got a gat in his hand, and it seems he's about to crack me one with it. I snatch the gun from his hand, and then I notice red on his shirt's front. Next thing I know, there's a crowd o half-dressed people, and I'm arrested for killin' Polk Jennison in attempted highway robbery. Jennison has crumpled up` like a wet rag and died before he could turn in any dope as to who had shot him. That's the truth, the same as I've told all along; now get out o' here and do something for me, quick!”

“Nobody but the Gov'nor can help you, son,” Higdon said, and his voice was weak.

“But he won't interfere, Bright told me!”

Slowly Spot Higdon shook his head. “Everybody thinks it's a clear-cut case, Kid.”

Maloney, his throat tight and his eyes dim, stretched himself out on the narrow bed. Higdon left the cell.

The afternoon dragged on. The shadow would soon begin to creep up the jailyard fence. Maloney went to the window, and stood there watching for the shadow, oddly and terribly fascinated. The dog whined under the cot, strained at the short leash. Then, footsteps in the corridor again. It was so quiet that they rang like blows. Higdon was coming back, the youthful prisoner knew. The deputy was very pale now. He pressed his face against four of the door's iron cross-straps.

“Listen, Kid,” he said, holding up a tremulous finger. “What do you hear?”

Maloney listened for some three seconds, “Nothin' at all,” he answered; “I don't hear nothin' at all.”

“A bell,” half whispered Spotswood Higdon, “a little bell. Don't you hear it, son? Ting-a-ling, ting-aling; don't you hear it?”

“I don't hear nothin',” reiterated the Cincinnati Kid.

“You—you'll be the second man to be hung in this country since I settled here ten years ago,” the deputy ran on. “The other one was a fellow named Spicer. He kept hearin' bells, he said, for three days before the execution; little, tiny bells. It's strange, son, don't you think?”

“Spot, you're goin' bughouse,” declared Maloney.

“No, I'm not. I hear bells, Spicer's bells.” Higdon sought a new grip on himself. “The pity of it was, Spicer was not guilty. It was proved afterward that he wasn't.”

The deputy turned and left the cell door. His walk was not quite steady.

An hour later, while Maloney stood at the barred window and watched the shadow of the gallows as it crawled upward on the fence, Sheriff Mayland Bright came.

“You feeling all right, buddy?” the sheriff asked.

“Elegant!” sneered Maloney, wheeling. “Beautiful! Lovely! Put yourself in my place, and see how you'd feel about it! But—— Aw, say, I don't mean to be sour to you, honest. You're a square shooter, Sheriff. But it—it's awful to be hung when I ain't any guiltier o' killin' Polk Jennison than you are.”

“I'm sorry, buddy. You don't know how sorry I am. I worked for you, Kid. I did everything possible to find a trail leading toward somebody else. You understand that it's not me that's to—to execute you, that it's the law, don't you?”

“I know, I know.” Maloney shrugged. “Say, Spot Higdon is sure goin' bugs. Hears bells, he says, the same as that fellow Spicer heard. What's wrong with Spot?”

Mayland Bright frowned. “Spot isn't well. Comes of a nervous family, anyway. He's just given up his job, and wanted to leave now, but I couldn't spare him before Creesy gets back.”

“Say—” explosively—“I heard that this Polk Jennison was somethin' of a gambler; right?”

“Yes. A good deal of a gambler, Polk was.”

“Is Spot Higdon?” asked Maloney.

“No,” readily answered Bright. “But he used to be. You thinking Spot killed Polk, son? Get that out of your mind. They were the closest of friends, my boy.”

The Cincinnati Kid narrowed an eye wisely. “All the same, somethin's gnawin' the insides out o' Spot. And I'm wonderin' to beat everything how it happened that he was so close to the place where I met Polk Jennison, that night.”

“He lives near there, and he was awake with an aching tooth when the shots were fired. Anything special that you want, son?”

“Nope. Thanks.”

The echoes of Mayland Bright's departing footsteps died away. Maloney sat down on the floor beside his narrow bed, lifted the draped blanket, and put an arm around the small, brown dog.

“They're bound to string me up, boy,” he said gloomily. “They're bound to do it. Then what'll become o' you? Poor little m-m-m-mutt!”

THE day that the state had set for the execution of Thomas Maloney was a day that the sleepy old Southern town will be slow to forget. Matters at the courthouse and jail seemed queerly out of tune, somehow, and the name of unfortunate Hensley Spicer was mentioned more than once. Spotswood Higdon had a cadaverous look now, and Mayland Bright's suspicions were as yet not aroused—Higdon had an abominable liver, and he was full of malaria, and he'd come of a nervous family.

Higdon went early, that Friday, to the basement cell.

“Bells, bells, bells, all night long,” he said. “Didn't you hear 'em? Honest now, tell the truth.”

“You nut!” cried Kid Maloney. Then suddenly, “Say, Spot, listen; don't you think you better confess, and save me? It'll soon be too late, y'know.”

“Me confess?” At once Higdon bucked up. He pretended that he didn't understand, pretended exceedingly well. “What on earth are you talkin' about, Kid, anyhow? Confess what?”

“The murder o' Polk Jennison, that's what!” flared Maloney. “If you don't them bells will get you; they'll ring you down into your grave—

“'The bells of hell go dinga-ling-a-ling,
⁠For you, but not for me?'”

The two lines of iron song had burst from the inner vaults of his memory and through his lips as though of their own volition. It had no apparent effect upon the deputy. He merely shrugged, and walked off. Maloney, a picture of utter hopelessness, stood there staring at the cell door after Higdon had gone.

Hours, eternal hours. Chains of leaden minutes, linked by sodden seconds. Time should have flown; instead, even the machinery of the universe seemed to have almost stopped. Then benefit of clergy, with Thomas Maloney still protesting his innocence and flatly refusing to pray. He hadn't been a praying man in life, and he wouldn't be in death.

Then Thomas Maloney stood on the scaffold, ankles and wrists bound, with the black hood on, with the noose about his neck and the hangman's knot caressing one ear like a beguiling wanton with a dagger in the other hand. Only a few persons had been permitted to enter the jailyard, but morbid and curious people watched from windows and house tops. There was silence so deep that it was well nigh terrifying in itself, as Mayland Bright, white in the face, put forth an unsteady hand to spring the trap.

“I'm sorry, my boy,” murmured the man inside the sheriff. “Good-by, and God love you.”

“God love you, too,” came strongly from the black hood. It was the acid test for the heart of Cincinnati Kid. “You're one white guy. I'll put in a good word for you, where I'm goin', if I can.”

High in the ether above, a bird sang. Then the awful stillness again, but it was soon broken by a quick, soft pattering, and the little mongrel dog raced up the scaffold steps and sat down on the trap at the feet of the Cincinnati Kid—smiling a canine smile of victory and joy, looking at Bright, looking worshipfully back to its new master, at Bright, back to its new master, and its tail beat a low tattoo on the rough boards. Once more the song of the bird above; again the gravelike silence. The high sheriff could not yet force his hand to do the will of his brain.

Then there came the sound of a bell, clear and distinct, as a peripatetic rogue cow halted to browse along the grassy edge of a sandy street. The commonplace thing became important, in that it provided a dramatic climax for the reign of the belled ghost in Spotswood Higdon's conscience—his voice rang out, shattered and shattering:

“Wait, Mayland—I killed Polk Jennison myself!”

The deafening, jarring crash of Higdon's own six-gun followed, and the deputy had cheated the rope.

Bright saw it all quickly now. He rushed to Thomas Maloney, snatched off the noose, fairly tore away the sombre hood, cut the small ropes that had bound ankle and wrist. Maloney blinked in the blessed sunlight. It occurred to him that it had all been a horrible dream. Mayland Bright was speaking joyously.

“The bell did it, son, but the dog helped; the dog made the minute's delay for the bell, the minute's delay that Spot must have found bitter hard.

“And then,” he added, with a narrowed eye, “it's Polk Jennison's dog.”