Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 25, No. 2, August 13, 1927

He was only a printer’s devil, and yet something told him that Bert Huffy’s peculiarities went deeper than they seemed

I

I didn’t have any use for Bert Huffy from the first day that he set foot inside the Argus-Enterprise office and went to work on composition. He hadn’t been around for more than two-hours before he had dropped a hunk of hot type metal down the front of my overalls and held my arms behind me until the stuff had blistered a long streak on my leg. And every day after that he had a new scheme thought up for making my life more miserable.

The other fellows, especially the older men, got pretty tired of a great big hulk like him always picking on a fifteen-year-old kid, and he got sorer than a boiled owl when they went after him about it. After that he did most of his dirt on the sly, but he was meaner than ever, if that’s possible. Things around the shop had come to a place where it looked like a battle might break out just any time. Then Huffy’s wife died.

We all felt pretty bad the night it happened. I felt worse than anybody else, for a little while, because you see I was sort of responsible, you might say for the way she died. But that doesn’t come just yet in my story. I guess I’d better go back and start at the beginning.

I’d been devil on the Bardstown Argus-Enterprise for about a year when Huffy came to Herb Smith — Herb was foreman — and asked for a job in the composing room. Herb didn’t say yes right at first, and certainly nobody could blame him.

I never saw a worse looking sample of a tramp printer than this fellow was. It was in the middle of the winter, but Huffy didn’t have on enough clothes to pad a baby’s crutch. His old tom coat was turned up around his scrubby neck and his hat was pulled down low, but you could see enough of his face to know that he’d lost his last job because he saw all his letters double.

Besides, I could smell his gin breath clear down where I was sitting, between the type cases. While he talked he shifted back and forth on his feet, and the black snow-water squished out from the ends of his shoes every time he moved.

He put up a pretty whining sort of a Story, about how his wife was an invalid and he was trying to make enough to send her to some sort of a specialist. Herb had been short a man in the comp room ever since Harry Transcoe left to take a job in Columbus, so he wound up by taking Huffy on for a trial.

Huffy turned out to be an A-number-one man around the place. I’ll say that for him even if he did make life mighty miserable for me. The city government had the blind-pigs and ’leggers all scared out at that time, and Bert never had much chance to get tight, so it wasn’t long before he was a regular hand at the plant.

He rented a little house out at the edge of the town, just across the Hollow from my mother’s and had his wife come down from his sisters where she’d been living. I used to see her once in a while when I’d go past with my papers, but I never liked her much better than her old man.

She was a sloppy, fat old thing, always complaining because I didn’t throw the paper up on the porch, or else because it was hard on her heart for me to sling the folded copy against the front of the house with such a thump.

Nobody ever saw much of her around town. She didn’t even go to church. When Brother Beeson, our preacher, called on her to invite her to attend church she told him that her heart wouldn’t stand the least little shock, doctors had warned her, and that she was honestly afraid that the praying and singing — not to mention Brother Beeson’s ranting sermons — would be too much for her.

On the afternoon of the day she died I had finished my work and was sacking up a bunch of papers to deliver on my way home. You see, I had a paper route for four years before I got a regular job around the shop and it was still part of my day’s work to deliver to a batch of houses out in the west end around the Hollow. It was a hard part of town to get to and it was right on my way home, so I was glad to do it. But after Mrs. Huffy died I wished a hundred times that I’d had a different evening job.

Well, anyhow, on that particular afternoon while I was folding the papers Huffy came into the carriers’ room. The other boys had all left and the circulation manager was down in the front office, so I was all alone.

Huffy looked around sort of queer like and asked me if I wouldn’t like for him to deliver the papers in his neighborhood that evening. He said it was so snowy that the road around the Hollow would be hard to get through and that he could put the five or six papers out before supper as easy as not.

I was pretty much tempted to let him do it, but I got to thinking about all the mean tricks he’d pulled and it struck me that this was more than likely something new to cause me grief. So I told him that I’d manage somehow, thank you.

Then he did another thing that was mighty funny — for him. He gave me a quarter and told me to run down to Switzer’s cigar store and buy him a plug of chewing tobacco. He said for me to be sure to go clear over on Market Street to Switzer’s to get it on account of their stock being fresher, and for me to take the change and buy myself some candy or an ice cream sundae.

I didn’t see any point in my going, but rather than have a row I tore out, leaving my papers behind. When I got back, about twenty or twenty-five minutes later Huffy was nowhere in sight.

I asked the colored janitor downstairs about him and he said that he had heard some one leave through the back door about five minutes before I got back from my errand. I didn’t know what to do with the tobacco, so I stuck it in the drawer of a type-case, so mother wouldn’t find it on me, and took my bag of papers and started home.

When I passed the Huffy place it was dark as pitch. I whistled and threw the folded paper at the house, being careful to get it on the porch without banging it against the door. You see, I remembered Missus Huffy’s crankiness.

I listened to see if I’d got it clear up on the porch and was pretty much surprised when I heard it thump against the house. I hadn’t realized that I put so much whip behind it. I sort of hung around for a minute to see if blind old Missus Rafferty came out to feel around for it like she always does when I hit the house or whistle.

Sure enough, in a minute she opened the door and I saw her on her knees reaching around on the cement floor for the folded paper. She found it close to the threshold and straightened up, unfolding it. I figured that there wouldn’t be any kick to-night and went on to the other houses, getting home about supper time.

I remember that we ate as soon as I got the chores done because I had to hurry back down to the shop extra early to melt up a batch of type metal. You probably know that the metal used in making slugs — lines of type — is all remelted after it’s used and run out into molds to make little blocks called “pigs,” just the size to go into the pot of a linotype machine.

It was my part of the job to melt the old metal down every Saturday night, but there was a lot of stuff standing on the stone, a bunch of catalogues, the by-laws of the Odd Fellows lodge, and stuff like that, and that used up so much metal that I had to melt twice a week. Herb had ordered me to run a big batch through that night and I was anxious to get it done as early as I could.

We were about half through eating when Mr. Scoggins, who lives next door to the Huffy’s, came running up to the kitchen door and called mother out. “Missus Huffy just dropped dead,” he told her. “Come right over will you?”

II

I grabbed my hat and mother threw a shawl around her shoulders and we followed him back to Bert’s house.

Dr. Ferris was there when we arrived and as we came in he was just saying that somebody ’d better send for the coroner, because he didn’t feel that it was exactly his place to sign the statement. There were several neighbors in the little sitting room, all talking in whispers.

They had carried her into the front bedroom downstairs and you could hear Missus Rafferty in there carrying on. I don’t know whether she was honestly sorry Missus Huffy was dead or just upset by the suddenness of it all.

Bert Huffy was sitting over behind the stove, all hunched over, with his face in his hands. He didn’t say a word unless somebody spoke to him and then he only answered by nodding or shaking his head. He acted like a man who had had a terrible shock.

Everybody sat around for about a half hour, looking sober, with now and then somebody saying something in a low tone. Some of the boys from the shop came in and shook Bert’s hand and finally the coroner got there.

He, Dr. Manifew, was a skinny, yellow-haired man with a drooping mouth and eyes cold like ice in the moonlight. Dr. Ferris had gone a little while before, so the coroner took charge all by himself. First he called blind old Mrs. Rafferty in and asked her a lot of questions.

She told him how she had heard me throw the Argus-Enterprise up on the porch and had carried it in and turned it over to Missus Huffy, who was sitting by the lamp, over to one side of the stove. She said she heard her unfold the paper and settle back in her chair, with a long sigh, like she always does.

The evening paper, you see, was about the only thing that happened to break the monotony for her all day. Missus Rafferty went on to tell how she had gone out to the kitchen to set the table and how, after she’d been out there about five minutes, all at once she heard Missus Huffy give a funny little gagging cry and fall out of her chair.

She ran out of the kitchen as fast as she could, which was pretty slow, she being old and blind in the bargain, and tried to help Missus Huffy up. The old woman wasn’t quite dead when she reached her and screamed something about, “My Gretchen!” before she died.

“Wait a minute please,” the coroner interrupted her. “Who is this Gretchen?”

Huffy answered, him. “She’s my wife’s daughter by her first marriage. She lives in Texas.”

“Let’s see that evening paper,” said Dr. Manifew. “There must be something in it that will explain things.”

Nobody moved or said anything for a minute, then old Missus Rafferty called, “Bert, you git it. You was lookin’ at it last.”

Bert dug the paper out from under the stand-table, looked at the date, and passed it over. I noticed when he did it that the creases from my folding were still sharp, and wondered how that happened.

The coroner looked through the front page, column at a time, then did the same for every other page, running his long nose up and down like a rabbit dog. Directly he put the paper down and frowned.

“There isn’t a thing here about anybody by that name,” he growled, “and as far as I can see there’s not a statement in the whole sheet that is exciting enough to give a woman a shock. It may be that your wife misread a line or else dreamed she saw something about her daughter. At any rate, I can’t see that I’m concerned in the matter particularly.” And after a few more questions about Missus Huffy’s age, health before death, and so on, he filled out some form papers and left.

I’d found the whole business pretty interesting — although it was sad, of course — and stuck around till after Dr. Manifew was gone. Then I remembered my work down at the shop and told mother that I was going right on down town from the house. Bert overheard me and got up out of his chair.

“I guess I’ll walk down with you,” he said. “I’ve got to do something to pull myself together. Besides, I’ll have to send some telegrams to her folks.” He was putting on his coat and hat while he talked and, while I didn’t much relish the idea of taking him with me, he beat me out of the door.

He turned around to pull the door shut in a certain way, so that it would latch in spite of the felt packing around it and I went on down the steps. As I stepped off the last one I felt something under my shoe that didn’t feel like snow or cement. I stooped over to have a look, but when I saw what it was I straightened up quick before Bert saw me. The sight of the thing gave me an awful jolt. It was a folded copy of the evening paper, the one I had thrown up there two hours before!

Somehow I felt in my bones that the best thing to do was to say nothing about the matter to Bert. I’d begun to have funny ideas about him. So when he came down off the porch I made some fool remark about having a ton of work to do before midnight and hurried on down to the road.

When we came out of the gate Bert turned to me and put his hand on my shoulder, sort of pally like. I pulled away from him, but he went on talking.

“Kid,” he said, making his voice sound off-hand and casual, “You had a hard day to-day. Go on home and get a good night’s sleep. I’ll run on down and unlock the forms and wash ’em up and run the pigs. I couldn’t sleep even if I went to bed tonight.”

I honestly thought it was pretty considerate of him to offer to do all that and was about to say I’d accept with thanks, when there popped into my mind that queer business about the evening paper, and something just told me to keep a stiff upper lip and saw wood. So I made an excuse about being afraid the boss would fire me if he found I was letting somebody else do my night work, and said I’d just go ahead and fix things up myself. Bert said all right, he’d give me a lift anyhow.

The Argus-Enterprise is printed down in the basement of the plant on an old-fashioned flat-bed press and it was part of my duties to trundle the forms back up to the make-up room every evening before I went home, and then to come back after supper and wash and unlook the forms. This left them all ready to be “thrown in” early the next morning.

So the first thing I did after we got to the plant and I had lighted the fire under the big melting pot was to take off my coat and start in washing up the day’s forms. Huffy began on the same job, picking out the front page form to start on.

He was back at the other end of the room and I didn’t see exactly how it happened, but somehow he tried to slide the big heavy form of type across the stone an let it fall off. It made an awful racket and splintered a board in the floor, not to mention pieing all that type, and I was pretty sore. I ran back there to see what had happened and found Huffy down on his knees gathering up the scattered slugs, headline type, column rules, and so on.

“I’m sorry,” he said when I came up. “I’m just too nervous to work to-night, I guess.” I really pitied him, he seemed so cut up, and got down with him to help clean up the mess.

Some of the column rules and wooden “furniture” were bent and broken in the fall and I laid them to one side as we worked. “These,” I remarked, “will have to go to the hell-box, I suppose.”

Now there wasn’t anything in that remark to excite any one. A “hell-box” is just a big old packing case or chest of some sort where printers throw damaged type, broken wood, and such junk as that. It is off in an out of the way corner and gets cleaned out about every ten years.

I couldn’t see why Bert should get his back up so when I mentioned it, but as soon as the words left my mouth his face went dark and he grabbed me by the arm with a grip like a clamp.

“Don’t you go near that damn thing!” he snarled out. “I’ll take ’em back there myself!”

I told him that I hadn’t said anything about who was to take the stuff and that he was welcome to the job as far as I was concerned. But that didn’t seem to satisfy him, and he got up right then and there and grabbed the junk and headed for the back room.

As soon as he got through the door I went down the front stairway four steps at a time, and ran back through the lower floor, and came up the back stairs just as Bert got to the corner where the hell-box stood. His back was toward me and I hadn’t much trouble in sneaking over behind a halftone cabinet about five feet from the place where he was standing.

When I peeped around the corner I saw Bert down on his knees pawing over the stuff in the box. He seemed to be hunting something — something important. After a minute or two I heard him mumble something to himself and saw: him straighten up.

He must have had some kind of a hunch that he wasn’t alone just then, because he whirled all at once and peered down toward the door of the make-up room — I guess he noticed that I wasn’t making any noise down there. Anyhow, he started tiptoeing toward that door.

I held my breath and waited till he passed the spot where I was hiding, praying that he would give me time to get back to the front end the way I had come. As he passed me I saw that he was carrying in one hand a bunch of type slugs.

I was standing there shaking and asking myself how in the world that new type metal happened to be in with the junk when my elbow grazed a gasoline can and it fell to the floor with an awful clatter Huffy spun around like a mechanical doll, and before I could budge he was on top of me.

“You sneakin’ little spy,” he screamed, “I’ll teach you to butt into my business!” And he grabbed my shirt collar with his free hand and jerked me out in the middle of the floor.

I was too surprised to show any fight for a minute and before I knew it he had pulled me across to the door of the carriers’ room where the big vat of hot metal was bubbling away like pictures you’ve seen of the crater of a volcano. The glow from the fire lighted his face up till he looked like the Old Scratch himself.

His eyes were bulging out of their sockets and his lips were pressed together so close that they made a pinkish white line across his ugly face. It wasn’t till we got near the metal cooker that I began to realize that the man was crazy — crazy with anger.

“Just you wait till I get my other hand empty,” he yelled in my face, “and I’ll stick you head first into that kettle if it’s the last thing I do on this damned earth!” And I honestly believe he’d have done it too, if I’d given him about another minute.

III

It broke on me all at once that he was working over to the type vat to throw that handful of metal in so that he could use both fists on me, and just about then I got my ire up.

I’m pretty husky for my age — having made a living for mother and me with my two hands ever since dad left us six years ago — and before Huffy knew it he had all he could handle.

I braced myself against the door jamb and pulled back as hard as I could, kicking Huffy’s shins whenever I could reach him. He saw that he needed to use both arms and turned to throw the fistful of slugs at the pot.

I jerked just as he let them fly and most of the pieces fell short of the pot and landed on the floor. That made him absolutely wild and he grabbed me with both arms lammed me down on my head and then started dragging me toward the fire, swearing every inch of the way.

We were close enough to feel the scorching heat now and I never did feel as near death before.

My fingers gave way every time I got a fresh hold on a benchleg or corner and I’d about given up hope when my dragging hands brushed over a pig and before Bert knew what was coming I drew myself up on one elbow and let it fly at his head.

It struck him over one eye and he fell like a stuck hog, with blood streaming from the gash. I took time enough to gather up the four lines of type that he’d been fighting over and ran down and out the front door as fast as I could tear.

I felt easier when I got down town, about two blocks away from the plant, and stopped in front of a drug store to think. I realized one thing; that was that I didn’t want to go home by myself — out across the Hollow. Bert might come to in time to meet me out there before I could reach our house. Besides, I had those precious slugs in my hand and I was anxious to turn them over to somebody.

I held them up in the light from the store window and tried to make out what they said. And I saw something on one of them which made up my mind for me. I caught the next dinky street car that passed and rode out to Dr. Manifew’s house.

By good luck he was at home, just getting ready to go to bed, but, tired as he was, he listened to my story with the closest attention. I told him about the extra paper in front of Huffy’s house, about the slugs in the hell-box and about the fight.

Then we got a bottle of ink and smeared on the type lines and I pulled a proof on a piece of writing paper. The lines didn’t look like much at first glance. They read:

I didn’t have to study those words more than a minute before the whole story dawned on me.

“Look, doctor,” I cried. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face.” The doctor was too interested to take any offense at that personal remark, but just nodded his head two or three times, quick.

“See here,” I went on. “Here’s the whole thing. Huffy waited to-night till I had brought up the forms. Then he sent me on a wild goose chase long enough to give him time to pull out a stick or two of type from the front page, in a prominent spot, where his wife would be bound to see it.

“During the day, at noon probably, he had set up this story about her daughter being killed in a crossing accident. He slipped that story into the form — fudging it’s called in a newspaper office — and probably pulled a hand proof of the front page with a block and mallet. He’d have plenty of time while I was gone, and there is no one in the make-up room at that hour of the day.

“He pasted that front page on a regular edition, knowing that his wife would never notice the pasted edge, and hid beside the porch till I came along. When I threw my paper he was there to see that his was the one that Missus Rafferty got hold of.

“He waited outside till the thing had done its work, then he went in and destroyed the dummy Argus-Enterprise. He could have stuck it in the stove without a bit of trouble, Missus Rafferty being blind and terribly excited. He had hid the type slugs from the fake story in the hell-box till he could get a chance to destroy them and pied the form they came out of so nobody would notice the hole they left. If we didn’t have these four pieces of metal there wouldn’t be a thing in the world to accuse him!”

The coroner sat still a minute after I finished, then jumped to the phone and called the police station. “Go arrest Bert Huffy,” he ordered them. Then he stood there listening to something that they were telling him.

“Well I’ll be hanged,” he exclaimed after a minute. “Well, perhaps that’s the best after all.” He hung up the receiver and turned around to me. “Bert Huffy jumped off the railroad bridge about fifteen minutes ago,” he said, slow and solemn-like.

The next day Dr. Manifew and I checked over the case and found that my guess had been right on every count. It came out, too, that Huffy had been carrying two thousand dollars’ life insurance on his wife for years and years. I guess he just couldn’t wait any longer.