Speaker 1: The guilty man a study and tragedy appearances, as has
often been said, are misleading. Many A girl on a
fur coat, gold buckled shoes, and an expensive Marcelle Snip's
ribbon behind the counter. That inoffensive cloud over there may
darken and spit forth lightning. Your sweet faced wife may
be plotting to deceive you. Persons go wrong. Jeffrey Sobs,
sitting with outward placidity on a box before his barn door,
with a keen bladed, horn handled knife in his hand,
slowly whittling, as though his sole aim in life was
to model a yacht in perfect miniature, was in reality
thinking how smoothly that same knife would carve into the
heart of his enemy, Philip Lober. His hate was a
black hate, compounded of jealousy, envy, a sense of inferiority,
and fear. It had begun twelve years ago when the
two men, owning adjoining farms, and having been good friends
until then, Philip Loeber commenced to climb and Jeffrey Sobs
to go down. Jeffrey drank, but that was his own affair.
Lots of men took a glass now and then and
made money just the same. But he was driven to
borrow money from the more prosperous Philip, not once, but
again and again, and he grew to hate the man
who had befriended him. Then Martha Hansen came along with
her yellow hair and her fresh cheeks and her soft,
laughing eyes, to settle with her uncle in the old
leather bey place. The uncle had fallen from his threshing
machine the following year and was killed. There been a quiet,
slow but determined battle for her hand between the two men.
Lober had won. Although Martha was dead now, and Geoffrey
could see the daisies waving in the spring on her
grave in the orchard corner over there, on his neighbor's land,
he had neither forgiven nor forgotten. This was Count two. Also,
Lober had given him advice about his habits, advice which Jeffrey,
growing more and more aloof and bitter hearted and weasel
faced and grim for the smoldering hate in his heart, considered,
had been offered with a superior air. Count three, And
Lober had sworn yesterday to have Sobs arrested for stealing
a dozen of his fine white leghorns. It was the
fear that followed this threat that had started the whittler's
brain on its evil scheming. He would kill him, and
he wondered why he had not thought of it before.
It would be easy. Since his wife's death, Philip Lober
had lived alone with only a man serpent, who slept,
as Jeffrey knew, in a room over the carriage house
a few hundred yards from the back door. When the
two farmers had been friends, Sobs had often spent the
evening talking and smoking with his neighbor. That was before
he'd become full of hate and had taken to drink.
He knew where his enemy slept, and that there was
only a very simple lock on the outside door downstairs.
His knife would get through that easily. The hired man,
a young, melancholy but on the whole good natured Dane,
would be in his loft by eight o'clock or nine
at the latest. Lober would be sitting by the fire
or preparing for bed, dropping his big boots on the
floor and yawning widely. After the hard day in the fields.
The man with the knife would come up behind speak
so that the other would turn. It was part of
his design that the enemy should see the hand that
struck him down, and the knife would be in his
heart before he could cry out. The man in the sun,
whittling at the miniature ship, smiled grimly, and with one powerful,
vicious plunge of the sharp blade, cut his work in
two like a piece of cheese, and flung it aside.
His thinking was done. It was a propitiously dark night,
black as Jeffrey SOB's soul and is full of turmoil,
a night full of the ohs and ahs of wind
tortured trees that bent curiously down to see the man
who was going to kill his friend. It was March,
and the water in the creek that ran between the
two farms was high and noisy, rushing through the darkness,
as if anxious to be away from the menacing meadows
of the little Wood and the big dark man who
crossed heavily over the uncertain bridge. Some newborn lambs cried
pitifully from the sheepfold, and a coyote howled in answer.
A streak of moon peered out fearfully and disappeared. Approaching
his victim's house, he looked up and saw that the
farm hand was moving about in his room, undressing, perhaps already,
although it was not yet nine. No, he was moving
swiftly back and forth, stooping to lift something, passing the window,
almost at a run. Suddenly, as though he felt the
scrutiny of the man outside, he snatched at the blind,
and the window was dark. Whatever he was doing, he
was up there and out of the way, thought Geoffrey Sobs.
My work is here. It will soon be over, and
I will be home with my tracks well covered before
anything is discovered. I shall be rid of the fool
in a little while. How simple a thing murder is,
after all, he meditated as he crept toward the door
he had planned to enter. That suspicion would certainly never
fasten on him. He had carried his enmity in his
heart like a secret disease, and had confided in nobody.
The crime would no doubt be laid to the robbers
and drifters who infested the highway into town. He had
no fear that he would be caught, only that he
might find his enemy alert and waiting, and that the
deed might be defeated. There was a light in the kitchen,
as he could see through a slit in the door.
Try as he might, it was a very difficult thing
to raise the lock with his knife without making a sound,
But after a full fifteen minutes he accomplished it. He
opened the door, pushing it in softly and cautiously, inch
by inch. A creak he sprang inside. In the kitchen,
a lamp was burning, but as far as he could see,
no one was there in the bedroom. Perhaps He strode
across the bare floor, looking with quick motions of his
head to left and right like a jungle beast who
expects death to leap from every shadow. Not a sound
in the house, And then he saw the body of
Philip Lober, whom he had come to kill, already dead,
with a knife jab in his thick red neck and
his inert legs sprawling grotesquely. He noticed that the room
was in confusion. A chair air was overturned, the cloth
was dragged partly from the table and lay along the
floor among a litter of broken china. A blackened log
lay on the hearth rug, as if it had been
seized for a weapon. He stood, gaping like an idiot,
with the knife in his hand, and his eyes riveted
to the spectacle of his enemy slain. The work he
had come to do was done. He could not move,
even when he heard a heavy step approaching. He could
only stand helpless on the spot. Albert, the hired man,
tall and blond almost to whiteness, with a smooth, boyish
face and the wide open, brilliantly blue eyes of a child,
came into the room, carrying an old straw suitcase in
one hand and his cap in the other. He started
on seeing a visitor, and of his face had not
yet been already as white as paper, he would have paled,
mister Sobs, for God's sake, mister Soalbs, He looked with
a shuddering glance at the body of his employer that
lay between them. Sobs put his knife away and said, deliberately,
do you know who killed him? The man stammered, but
what do you do here, mister Sobs. A hard look
came over the face of the would be murderer, but
he did not answer. He seemed hunting for words. Suddenly,
the Dane shut his square jaw with a snap, and
bright red color flowed into his face. The arteries in
his neck stood out, and he pointed a finger that
shook with emotion at the other man. You you were
his enemy, he told me, you did it. I saw
the knife you put away. I did not do it,
said Jeffrey Sobs quietly. Albert dropped his suitcase and in
the flash of a half second, had an ugly looking
revolver leveled at the other man. You sit down in
that chair. I'm going to telephone for the sheriff. Wait,
get that rope from the nail. Sobs took a quick
look at the ominous black mouth of the weapon and
pulled down the rope sullenly. In a few minutes, he
was bound tightly to the chair and was sitting alone
with the dead man while he listened to the farm
hand's thick voice speaking into the telephone. He let his
head fall to his breast, for suddenly all the energy
that had driven him here subsidy and left him weary
and only desiring rest sleep. The Dane came back, striding
thunderously in his big boots, and sat down opposite his prisoner.
For a long time, they were silent, the one with
his glance on the floor at his feet, sunk in
an apparent apathy, and the other with his face averted
from the huddle that had been his master, and then
slowly hesitatingly, his big blonde head turned and he looked,
but with aversion, at the dead man. As he did so,
Jeoffrey Sobs raised his eyes. I thought, so, Albert, he
threw out with a laugh. You killed him? What you
think that, I, mister Sobs, You killed him, repeated Sobs.
I'm only curious to know. Why do you mind telling
me you think I I know it. Don't lie, boy,
when you came in, you didn't even go near the body,
and you've hardly looked at it, since that's one reason
an innocent man would have gone over to see if
he were really dead. You were the color of chalk
when you came in and before you saw him. Also,
I see by your face that I'm right. Untie me
for answer, the younger man put his head down on
his hands and burst into loud sobbing, And when he
raised it again, his face was wild and tears streaked,
and this big strong frame shook. He was as a
child who fears nothing so much as his own sin.
I did it, he flung out, speaking quickly. I did it,
but I swear by my dear old mother in the fatherland,
by my little sister. I didn't mean to no, I
didn't mean to kill him. I ain't the kind of
fellow can kill anybody, mister Sobs. He got to his
feet and stood there wringing his hands. It was because
of my little sister, Elsa, who works as maid in town.
I sent for her from home last year seventeen. She
is and pretty. He shuddered and looked fearfully toward the
man he had killed. He began paying her attention, and
when I asked him what he intended to do, he laughed.
He just laughed at me, and you killed him. We
fought like two men. Called him a name, and he
struck me, and we fought. He was a big man,
stronger than me. He took a knife from the table
it was fixed for supper, and he ran at me.
It was me or him again. Geoffrey Sobs laughed always.
His laughter had a sinister, dark note in it. He said, lightly,
or with an assumption of lightness. You have a hard
time making the police believe your story. I know it.
I was going to run away, but now I got
to hang for that, mister Sobs, and little Elsa, my mother.
He sat down heavily again, with his face hidden in
his hands. Me he muttered never, never could I heard
a fly like a girl I am. He got up
suddenly and came over to untie the ropes, but Sobs
stopped him with a sharp word of command. Leave them
alone when they come, keep your mouth shut. I'm the murderer,
not you. The Dane's eyes opened wide you he began.
I came here tonight to kill him. I hated him
for years, envied and despised him. I came with my
knife in my hand, through the neck of the woods
over the bridge and opened the door with the blade.
I planned the whole thing, but for you, my hands
would be read. Now. You killed him in an honest
fight over a woman's honor. I wished to put him
out of the way because you was richer, more lucky
with the women. He lorded it over me. I came
to kill him. Can I let you hang, mister Sobs,
for what I did. You'll have to, boy, because I
left a note home in case anything happened to me
about my property. In that I'll tell them to get it.
I'll swear I came to kill him in my heart.
I had committed the crime a dozen times over. The
law would say you were the guilty man, But which
one of us is a murderer? You or I? Voices
and stamping and hurried feet outside, and three burly men
came in, grim faced and hard eyed and determined. They
gave quick comprehending glances about the room, advanced to the
man in the chair, and unbound him. He stood silently
while they put the cold iron circlets around his wrists.
He even smiled when the Danes seized his manacle hands
and pressed them in a frantic sobbing good bye. End
of the Guilty Man, A study and tragedy.