Ring Around the Sun

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

LONG before he reached Flanders' house, Vickers saw that there was something wrong. The house was lighted up from basement to garret. Men with lanterns were walking about the yards and there were other knots of men who stood around and talked, while all along the street women and children stood on the porches in hastily snatched-up robes. As if, Vickers thought, they were waiting for a strange three o'clock parade that might at any moment come winding down the street.

A group of men was standing by the gate and as he turned in, he saw there were some he knew. There was Eb, the garage man, and Joe, the exterminator, and Vic, who ran the drugstore.

"Hello, Jay," said Eb, "we're glad that you are here."

"Hello, Jay," said Joe.

"What's going on?" asked Vickers.

"Old Man Flanders," said Vic, "has up and disappeared."

"His housekeeper got up in the night to give him some medicine," said Eb, "and found he wasn't there. She looked around for him for a while and then she went to get some help."

"You've searched for him?" asked Vickers.

"Around the place," said Eb. "But we're going to start branching out now. We'll have to organize and get some system in it."

The drugstore owner said: "We thought at first maybe he'd been up during the night wandering around the house or out into the yard and might have had a seizure, of one sort or another. So we looked near at hand at first."

"We've gone over the house," said Joe, "from top to bottom and we've combed the yard and there ain't hide nor hair of him."

"Maybe he went for a walk," Vickers offered.

"No man in his right mind," declared Joe, "goes walking after midnight."

"He wasn't in his right mind, if you ask me," said Eb. "Not that I didn't like him, 'cause I did. Never saw a more mannerly old codger in all my born days, but he had funny ways about him."

Someone with a lantern came down the brick paved walk. "You men ready to get organized?" asked the man with the lantern.

"Sure, sheriff," said Eb. "Sure, we're ready, any time you are. We just been waiting for you to get it figured out."

"Well," said the sheriff, "there ain't much that we can do until it gets light, although that's only a couple hours away. But I thought maybe until it got light enough to see we might take some quick scouts out around. Some of the other boys are going to fan out and cover the town, go up and down all the streets and alleys and I thought maybe some of you might like to have a look along the river."

"That's all right with us," said Eb. "You tell us what you want us to do and we sure will do it."

The sheriff lifted his lantern to shoulder height and looked at them. "Jay Vickers, ain't it? Glad you joined us, Jay. We need all the men there are."

Vickers lied, without knowing why he lied: "I heard some commotion going on."

"Guess you knew the old gent pretty well. Better than the most of us."

"He used to come over and talk to me almost every day," said Vickers.

"I know. We remarked about it. He never talked to no one else."

"We had some common interests," Vickers said, "and I think that he was lonely."

"The housekeeper said he went over to see you last night."

"Yes, he did," said Vickers. "He left shortly after midnight." "Notice anything unusual about him? Any difference in the way he talked?"

"Now, look here, sheriff," said Eb. "You don't think that Jay had anything to do with this?"

"No," the sheriff said. "No, I guess I don't." He lowered the lantern and said, "If you fellows would go down to the river. Split up when you get there. Some of you go up-stream and some of you go down. I don't expect you to find anything, but we might as well look. Be back by daylight and we'll really start combing for him."

The sheriff turned away, walking back up the brick pavement, with his lantern swinging.

"I guess," said Eb, "we might as well get started. I'll take one bunch down the river and Joe will take the others up. That all right with the rest of you?"

"It's all right with me," said Joe.

They walked out the gate and down the street until they hit the cross street, then went down to the bridge. They halted there.

"We split up here," said Eb. "Who wants to go with Joe?"

Several men said they would.

"All right," said Eb. "The rest of you come with me." They separated and plunged down from the street to the river bank. Cold river mist lay close along the bank and in the darkness they could hear the swift, smooth tonguing of the river. A night bird cried across the water and looking out to the other bank, one could see the splintered starlight that had shattered itself against the running current.

Eb asked, "You think we'll find him, Jay?"

Vickers spoke slowly. "No, I don't. I can't tell you why, but somehow I am pretty sure we won't."