Chapter XI: Preparations for Defense

Doctor Somers arose slowly, his long, thin arms and legs looking more frail, more tenuous, than usual. One feared that they would snap, like pipe stems, under the slightest strain. He did not look in the least like the man to brave the fury of a mob; but his dark, saturnine face was quite unmoved.

“Bright lad!” he exclaimed, sarcastically. “Go ahead; frighten the girl to death, why don’t you?” He patted Dorothy’s arm with unexpected gentleness. “Now don’t you worry, child; we’ll look after your young man for you. Nobody’s going to be lynched to-night!”

He beckoned us out, and in the hall he asked Peter if he had a shotgun.

The boy nodded. “I’ll get it,” he said, and ran up the stairs.

Presently he was back, panting, with a repeating shotgun and an automatic pistol. “Lucky I had two guns,” said he, stuffing a box of shells into his pocket. “The coroner took the other one. And here, Somers, here’s an army pistol and some cartridges.” Peter had been a second lieutenant.

Somers waved it aside. “Don’t want it. Give it to Uhlman, here. I don’t think we’ll need firearms, but it’s well to be prepared. Now let’s go!”

My nephew’s car still stood in front of the house; we piled in and drove toward Main Street.

“I take it your constable won’t be much help,” said Somers, “if they’ve taken his keys so easily.”

Peter snorted. “A big yellow pup!”

“Right! We won’t bother him. Stop at this grocery. Who keeps it, by the way?”

“Old Mrs. Tracy. But it’s closed.”

“So much the better. Kept by an old woman, you say; any man or boy in it?”

“No,” answered Peter, wondering. “She’s all alone, and deaf and half blind into the bargain. People only trade there for charity.”

“Fine!” declared Doctor Somers surprisingly. “Couldn’t be better!” He twisted his long legs out of the car. “As we came through from the train I noticed a lot of eggplant in the window.”

“Now, what the deuce----”

But Somers did not stop for questions. Already he had skirted the tiny shop and was knocking at its back door. When no answer came, he opened it and walked in. We heard the confused noise of his shouting at poor old Mrs. Tracy; presently he came back to the car with a grape basket under one arm.

“What kind of foolishness is this?” demanded Peter, craning his neck. The basket was full of round, purplish eggplant, a little bigger than a baseball. “Man, can’t you understand that Lewis Parker is in danger of his life?”

“I can,” replied Somers, unruffled. “Better than you do, perhaps. I’ve seen two lynching mobs before. Now don’t ask fool questions, but come along.”

He obeyed, blindly obedient. The man’s preparations seemed sufficiently absurd, but he seemed, at least, to know what he was doing, and neither of us had an idea of the proper steps to take.

“Now a book shop,” ordered our leader. “Stationery store--something like that. I want some writing paper.”

Without protest Peter drove across the way to Jack Wheat’s. Somers entered; through the window we watched him selecting stationery as calmly as if the whole night were before him. At last he came out, a package under his arm that might have held two hundred sheets of note paper with envelopes to match.

“They’ll have to do,” he remarked disparagingly. “Don’t be in such a hurry!” He glanced at his wrist watch, as Peter mumbled some protest. “They won’t start anything before the town’s safely gone to bed. Not until midnight, anyhow, I fancy. McGregor, you drive us round to the lockup and leave us there. Then take the car and hunt up a phone, where you won’t be interrupted. Try to find the sheriff--he’s a good sort of officer, I judge from what you’ve said--and tell him there’s going to be trouble to-night. Then come back to the jail.”

Peter protested unavailingly. The mob might come before he got back; Uncle George could go; Somers could go. He, Peter, ought to be here to protect Lewis.

“Shut up and get out! Uhlman can’t go; he can’t drive--can you? And I can’t go; I’m a stranger. But you can find a phone, and the sheriff’ll listen to you. Besides, I can do more here than you could. Hurry now; you’ll be back in plenty of time for the excitement.”

Reluctantly Peter went, after leaving Doctor Somers and me in front of the lockup. The doctor looked about approvingly. The lockup stood a little apart from the buildings about it, a tobacco warehouse on one side and an empty dwelling house on the other. He walked completely around the ugly brick jail, tried its barred windows with satisfaction.

“Fine,” he announced. “Clear space all around, if it came to a siege. And the windows are small and well barred; nobody can get in except through the door. Which is Parker’s window?”

I told him, and he went there and whistled. “Hello, Parker! It’s Somers. How’s the old doc, anyway? Good! Be in to see you to-morrow; can’t get hold of the keys just now.”

He came around to the front again and looked up at the arc light in the street. “Fine!” he repeated. “There’s an excellent light--good enough to read by.”

Whereon he sat himself down upon the wide jail steps, placed his basket of eggplant in the shadow beside him, and unwrapped that package of note paper. “Make yourself comfortable, Uhlman,” said he. “I’m going to be busy for a while.”

He produced a fountain pen and fell to writing, while I watched him in amazement. What on earth was he doing? Writing notices to post on the jail door, to warn off the mob? I could not imagine.

But there he sat, writing busily in a fine, copperplate script, hunched on the step, with his extraordinary legs coiled under him, his dark, sallow face calmly intent. The light from the street lamp cast the shadow of his thin, hooked nose downward over his chin and gave him the look of a fierce, long-legged bird.

At last Peter drove up. “Couldn’t get him,” he said, guardedly, his voice bitter with disappointment. “Gone over to the other end of the county after some negro. And the jail deputy’s got his hands full looking after the prisoners. He’ll send somebody over later, if he can. By then it’ll be too late!”

Somers looked up, quite undisturbed. “We don’t need anybody,” he answered indifferently. “Go park that flivver out of sight and come back on foot.”

When that was done, he stationed Peter with his pistol at one corner of the building, and me at the other, with the shotgun. I had asked for this weapon as being less likely to damage me, and more likely, in my hands, at least, of doing execution among the enemy than an automatic pistol, whose workings were strange to me. Then he returned to the steps, took up his fountain pen and fell to writing again.

And so began a vigil which seemed endless. Though the day had been hot, the night was cool, as our Southern nights usually are. A little breeze played about the corners of the jail, sending sharp twinges through my poor old joints; I shivered with cold and nervousness. I could hear Peter’s feet shuffling in the sand, and I knew that he, too, was restless. But between us Doctor Somers sat on the steps, hunched over his writing, and he did not even look up. His pen traveled rapidly, held in a hand as steady as a rock; he wrote note after note, all just alike apparently, and, as he finished each one, folded it methodically and tucked it into a blank envelope. His calm, untroubled face was bent studiously over his work, and he never shifted his position; we heard no sound from him save the steady scratching of his pen, the rustling of paper, as he folded one note and took up another sheet. For some reason, it was an eerie sight. I began to have more respect for Doctor Floyd Somers. He was brave, at any rate.