Black Mask (Vol. 23, No. 4 — August 1940)
Murder — for No Reason
by Roger Torrey
“Director of Physical Education” — that was what the C.C.C. authorities had hired Bryant to be for the summer session of that cow-country camp. But “One-Man Crime Prevention Bureau” would have been a more accurate title. That was what he had to turn himself into when someone began potting at him with a high-powered rifle and slaughtering wholesale the boys under his charge.
Chapter One
Trouble is Spelled with Three C’s
Just as I swam out even with the tip of the point something spatted the water by my head, then I heard a noise like the cracking of a whip. The actual sound of the rifle hadn’t reached me for a second — but by the time it did I was heading for shore as fast as I could swim.
I landed on the little beach where I’d left my clothes and Fred Ardella stepped out of the underbrush and said: “Hey! Mr. Bryant! I was watching you swim.”
I said: “It’s good exercise, Fred, and a lot fun. We’ll get up a class as soon as the water warms up more — it’s still like ice.”
He watched me while I got into my clothes and said: “Hey! The looie says you used to play football.”
“Three years for State,” I said. “And then three years pro. We’ll have a football team, too.”
“Why’d you quit? There’s dough in it, ain’t there?”
I said, “Sure. I got a bad leg two years ago, though, and it goes back on when I twist suddenly.”
“Huh! That why you took this job?”
I said it was. He asked me if it paid much money and I said nobody ever got rich out of being a director of physical education at a C.C.C. camp, but that it should turn out to be a lot of fun. Freddy sniffed and said his idea of fun wasn’t being stuck up in the middle of the woods and fifty miles from a picture show.
I figured he meant poolroom instead of picture show but let it pass. I was lacing my boots when he said: “Wasn’t that guy shooting at you?”
“What guy?” I asked.
He grinned at me and said: “Now look! I come from Chicago. I never seen nobody get shot but I heard guns before. And I seen that slug hit right by your puss. Who’s gunning for you, Mr. Bryant?”
I said that I hadn’t the least idea and that we should be getting back to camp, that I had a lot of things to do before they sounded the supper call. I didn’t tell Fred Ardella, but one of the things I wanted to do was find why somebody should start shooting a high-powered rifle at me my second day in camp.
It just didn’t seem the way to start out a happy summer that I’d figured would be a sort of vacation.
Captain Rawlins was in his office. He tipped his head so he could look at me over the top of the rimless glasses he wore, and I said: “Somebody shot at me, Captain Rawlins. I went swimming — and somebody potted at me while I was in the water.”
He took off the glasses and started polishing them. “You sure of that, Mr. Bryant?”
I said I was certain — that there could be no mistake. He said: “Possibly one of the boys has smuggled a twenty-two rifle into camp. We’ll have to investigate.”
With that, he looked at me to see how I was taking it.
“It was no twenty-two,” I said. “It was a big gun. I’ve shot enough of them to know that.”
“Almost hit you?”
“Pretty close.”
He had almost white hair but his close-cropped mustache was gray. He started to gnaw at it and said, “This is awkward!” as though he was thinking aloud.
I stood there, waiting, and he went on with, “The camp has been threatened, Mr. Bryant. Frankly, that’s why I approved your application, rather than asking for someone with more experience. I understand you originally came from this country.”
I said: “My dad’s old place is about twenty miles west of here. Dad sold it, years ago, but I grew up there.”
“Then you’d know just about everybody in the country?”
“All the old-timers.”
He put the glasses back on and said: “I was hoping there was nothing to the threat. Yet, I felt I shouldn’t take an unnecessary risk if it could be avoided. I was told this was not a very healthy place for a camp. In a very nice way, you understand. Of course we both know I have nothing to do or say about where the camp is located. I am sent here on orders only. But the people around here apparently do not realize that.”
“It’s an isolated spot, Captain Rawlins. If it’s like it used to be, a lot of these old-timers don’t even leave their ranches except for supplies. Not over twice a year sometimes. They’re behind the times.”
“Ah yes,” he said, chewing at his mustache. “I understand that, but I don’t understand the people. I can’t take a risk with these boys, you know, Mr. Bryant.”
Now we had two hundred and forty boys in camp, mostly from Chicago, or from Gary, right near there. A good part of them were lads with foreign-born parents — more than half, probably. Some of them were homesick and a lot more of them were half sore about being taken clear across the continent and put under the kind of supervision they were getting. There was enough opportunity for trouble right in the camp without more being added to it from outside sources.
I said all this, and Rawlins sighed and said: “I’m a regular army man, Mr. Bryant. I think these camps are a good thing — in fact, I think they are a fine thing — but I find dealing with the boys isn’t like dealing with an enlisted group. Discipline and order are harder to maintain. I want no other trouble.”
When I asked him who’d made the threats he said: “The man who made the threat is named Withers. He and some friends of his rode up for what they were pleased to term a friendly visit. Naturally I took them around and tried to explain the work we are doing. I explained the boys were building roads, clearing fire-trails, making drainage ditches, similar things. I explained to them our plan of making this a more or less permanent station and how we planned to make this a model camp. Why we were attempting a modified landscaping in the territory surrounding the actual camp. They listened to me very intently and then told me this was no place for the camp to be.
“I demanded to know what they meant by that statement and they said, vaguely, that the people around here didn’t approve of such foolishness. That the ranchers who specialized in raising cattle and sheep looked upon this section of country as summer range and would resent our boys being here. I imagine they are afraid of the boys scaring the stock, or some such foolishness as that. They mentioned the ever present danger of forest fire, claiming our boys would add to this. I told them that invariably someone was in charge of the boys when they were working outside of the camp proper, and that the boys would act as fire-fighters in case of need — that this was part of their duty. That, as a matter of fact, the danger of fire causing serious damage was lessened by their presence.”
“I don’t know, or remember, anyone named Withers,” I said. “Did he say where he lived?”
“Well, no. I didn’t ask — I took it for granted he lived fairly near. I didn’t take the man seriously then. But three days later, when a shot was fired at me, I decided the man was actually liable to be a menace.”
“They shot at you, too?”
“Yes. And at Lieutenant Ward. Neither bullet came close to either of us — we took them as a warning. That’s why I approved of your application.”
“Did you tell the state police?”
He took off the glasses again and looked at me severely. He said: “Mr. Bryant! I look on this as an army post. Technically, I suppose we are under the jurisdiction of the state police, but I hope I will not live to see the day when I am forced to call in police to protect men I am commanding. I rather think, that with your knowledge of the country and the people, we can work this out between us.”