by Max Brand
“Why, the people all know it.”
“Who told them?”
“The Burwells, I suppose. And Denham made some sort of a dying speech thanking Harry Burwell and begging him to look after Ruth.”
“Who heard that dying speech?” insisted Jimmy Jones.
“Don’t be cantankerous, Jimmy. I suppose that nobody but the Burwells heard it. There was nobody else there, of course.”
“The Burwells speak well of themselves, and all you people believe in them, eh?” said Jimmy Jones. “And now the poor girl is going to marry the murderer because she thinks he was good to the man he murdered?”
“Hold on, Jimmy! You’re running wild. Don’t let anybody hear you talking like this.”
“Sure I won’t,” agreed Jimmy Jones. “I’d a lot rather have them read me in print.”
“Print! Great Scott, you’re not going to print libel like that?”
“You know one way of starting a real fire? It’s by raising a lot of smoke. Leave all of this to me, brother.”
“By thunder,” said Parson, “there’s Harry Burwell now, and Ruth Denham with him. They’ve heard that something’s up, and that’s why they’ve come over here. They’re heading straight for you, and Burwell looks pretty mean.”
“Looks? He’s got a crooked eye, Joe.”
Burwell was a big fellow, quite handsome, with a capable pair of shoulders, well-cut features, and, as Jimmy Jones had noticed, an eye that was not altogether steady. He advanced upon the pair, stepping a little away from the girl, who followed him and plainly was trying to soothe him.
His attitude was so threatening that the cook straightened from his stove behind the lunch counter and began to stare at Burwell, who came straight up and glared at Jimmy Jones. As for the shifting of his eyes, it was like the roving glance of a prize fighter, looking for a good target.
“You’re the new Journal man, I hear?” said Burwell.
Jimmy Jones stood up and bowed to Ruth Denham with a pleasant smile. “I’m at your service,” he said to Burwell.
Joe Parson hastened anxiously through introductions.
“What sort of a yarn are you going to publish about my mine?” asked Burwell. “What’s all the ruction about?”
“You ought to know that better than I do,” said Jones.
“I ought to know?” exclaimed Burwell angrily.
“Well, wasn’t it one of your men who shot up the front of my building, and then nailed the notice on the door?” asked Jimmy.
“Certainly wasn’t one of my men!” exclaimed Burwell.
“Maybe it was only a joke, then.” Jimmy smiled.
“Are you trying to make a fool out of me?” demanded Burwell.
“Sorry if I am. I didn’t mean to,” said Jimmy, smiling a little.
“You’re one of these bright fellows, are you?” demanded Burwell. “I’m going to show you . . .”
“Steady, Harry,” said the girl. She had on a yellow dress and a wide hat with cornflowers girdling the crown of it.
“I’ll be steady enough,” declared Burwell. “I’m simply demanding to know what he’s going to print in that paper of his.”
Jimmy sighed very gravely and shook his head. “You know how it is in the publishing business. A man who takes his work seriously has a sacred obligation to perform.”
“And what’s that?” snapped Burwell.
“We have to give the public the truth,” said Jimmy slowly. He fixed his eyes on Burwell. “The whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
“Damned nonsense,” answered Burwell. “Your paper has always been filled with a pack of lies.”
“Harry,” broke in the girl, “you can’t talk like this.”
“It’s all right, Miss Denham,” said Jimmy. “Publishers have to learn to take abuse. I won’t lose my temper.”
“Your temper?” roared Burwell, starting violently. And he glowered down on the inferior inches of Jimmy Jones. “Besides,” said Burwell, “there’s nothing that you can print that will do me any harm.”
Jimmy, grown very sober to all appearances, looked straight into the face of Burwell. “Are you sure of that . . . if I bring out the whole truth?” he asked.
“What the devil do you mean?” asked Burwell. “Let me see what you’ve written for publication!”
“Sorry,” said Jimmy. “That’s against our rules. Besides, I didn’t write the article. It was done by a man who has lived here for a long time. He’s a man who ought to know. He’s a man who claims to know a great deal.”
“About the mine?”
“And you,” said Jimmy Jones.
“It’s Vin- . . .,” began Burwell. He stopped himself short.
“I can’t give you the name,” said Jimmy. He added grandly: “The public must have a chance to read what my paper prints and judge for itself.”
“The public?” said Burwell.
“Unless,” said Jimmy Jones, “the officers of the law decide to take a hand in investigating for themselves.”
Burwell, instead of answering, gripped the back of a chair as though he were about to hurl himself or the chair at Jones. But here the girl stepped suddenly in front of him and caught his hands.
“Harry, you’ve promised me,” she said. “You mustn’t lose your temper. You mustn’t give way to it.”
“He’s trying to rat me, Ruth,” said Burwell. “Jones, I’m going to look into you. You can’t come to this town and try to work any of your dirty dodges on me.”
Jimmy Jones kept on smiling. “When you come again,” he interrupted, “come alone, Mister Burwell, will you?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that I’ll be waiting and ready for you . . . night or day.”
“Ruth, step down the street a moment,” said Burwell loudly. “I want to be alone with this . . .”
“You’ve got to come away, Harry!” cried the girl.
And he, giving way, reluctantly backed out of the room and turned away onto the street.
“Now, Joe,” said Jimmy Jones softly, staring toward the door, “what do you think? Guilty or not guilty?”
“He’s guilty of something . . . I don’t know what . . . but it’s a sure thing that you’re in trouble unless you leave town.”
“Joe,” said Jimmy Jones, “this old town just begins to look interesting to me.”
III
The next morning, when Jimmy Jones was finishing his third cup of black coffee and absently crumbling the last wedge of cornbread that had helped him dispose of some fried eggs on top of thick venison steak, word came to him that Harry Burwell was waiting to see him in the lobby of the hotel.
He finished his coffee, made a cigarette, and then went out into the lobby. There Harry Burwell strode up to him with a tremendous frown.
“About last night,” said Burwell, “I want you to know that Jasper isn’t the town where scandal makes a newspaper and where . . .”
Here Jimmy Jones cut in: “Who killed Charles Denham?” He looked Burwell straight in the eye.
There was no answer. Harry Burwell looked as though he were trying to swallow something too big for his throat, and Jimmy walked straight past him and went out and to the office of the Journal. He found Joe Parson sweating with early business and looking distressed. People were filing steadily through the outer office, paying for copies of the Saturday edition of the paper. In the first pause, Parson came back into the little office where Jimmy sat with his spurred heels on the top of the editor’s desk.
“Listen, Jimmy,” said Parson, “I resign on Friday. I’m not going to be around here on Saturday when the people of Jasper get their papers and discover that this is all baloney. All this inside story about the Burwell mine, I mean.”
“Have the press print a hundred handbills like this and stick them around town where they’ll be read,” said Jimmy Jones, handing up a piece of paper on which certain words were written in large type.
Parson read that paper and groaned loudly.
“You realize that this is a cow town where every man packs a gun and knows how to use it?” asked Parson.
“Yeah. Sure, I realize,” said the editor-in-chief and owner of the Jasper Journal.
Parson read aloud, slowly:
THE INSIDE STORY OF THE BURWELL MINE. WHO KILLED CHARLES DENHAM?
IN THE SATURDAY ISSUE OF THE JASPER JOURNAL.
THE COMPLETE STORY WITH NOTHING HELD BACK.
JUSTICE NOW CAN RUB HER EYES AND WAKE UP.
NOTE: THERE WILL BE A FOUR-PAGE SUPPLEMENT. OWING TO THE UNPRECEDENTED DEMAND FOR COPIES OF THIS GREAT EDITION, ADVERTISING RATES IN THE SATURDAY JOURNAL WILL BE $500 A PAGE.
JAMES J. JONES
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF,
THE JASPER JOURNAL
Parson shook his head feebly. “What does the J stand for in the middle of your name?” he asked.
“Nothing,” said Jimmy. “It just fills out. Three Js are better than two.”
“Did you ever hear of rails and tar and feathers?” asked Parson. “This is a sell, Jimmy. These people will raise hell, and the Burwells will stretch your neck with a rope. Look. There isn’t anything inside about that story that your uncle wrote. There isn’t a thing that everybody doesn’t know. Neither do you know anything to hook up the death of Charles Denham with the Burwell mine.”
“Joe,” said Jimmy Jones, “I’m going to write a new story.”
“You are? When?”
Jimmy looked out the window that gave him a view of the rear yard of the building and the little barn that stood in it. Beyond the barn stretched the sunburned hills that circled the town of Jasper, and on the sides of the hills he could see the small dots of color that, he knew, were grazing cattle.
“By Friday night, at the latest, I’ll write the inside story of the Burwell mine,” he said. “I looked Harry Burwell in the eye this morning, and he’s as guilty as hell.”
“Yeah. Maybe. He didn’t look any too gay last night, when you gave him the old eye. But what proof have you got?”
“Proof is going to come,” said Jimmy Jones. “Get those handbills out, and we’ll clean up a couple of thousand dollars on the supplement.”
“What’s going to be in the supplement?” asked Parson.
“Nothing but advertising,” answered Jimmy.
Parson groaned. “You’re too bright to be an editor. You ought to be on Wall Street.”
“We’re making the news that we need to live on,” said Jimmy. “Get the press busy on those handbills.”
* * * * *
That evening at dusk Jimmy Jones sat in his office with Parson. There was no reason why they should keep the office open, but Jimmy felt that the town of Jasper would be intrigued by the streaks of light that appeared around the drawn shades of the offices. In fact, word of the inside story had traveled far. Every one of the four pages of the supplement, that day, had been sold at the full rates that had been announced, and the advertising had been paid for. Small boys gathered outside the building and attempted to peek through into the heart of the mystery. There was a tenseness of expectation gathering throughout the town of Jasper. But inside the offices, Jimmy Jones and Joe Parson were playing seven-up industriously.
Joe Parson shot the moon for the third time in a row, and then came a tap on the front door.
“Put on that eye shade and try to look like an assistant editor when you answer that door,” directed Jimmy Jones.
“Open it yourself,” replied Parson. “It’s the Burwell gang, come to shoot you up.”
Jimmy went to the door and threw it wide open. Before him stood the large, white-clad figure of Mr. Cadwallader of the Jasper Bugle.
He introduced himself with a heavy importance, and Jimmy asked him in.
Joe Parson had slipped the cards out of sight; he was already rattling at his typewriter, and he continued to turn out pages of copy while Cadwallader remained in the office.
“Mister Jones,” said Cadwallader, “it appears that you’re going to run a story on Saturday which has excited a lot of interest in this town. You seem to have stumbled on . . . I mean, you seem to have picked up a good lead. I hope it is straight news. And that led me to the conclusion that in a town of this size the two newspapers should be on the best of friendly terms. Your uncle and I, Mister Jones . . .”
“Took a sock at each other whenever you could, eh?” asked Jimmy politely.
The pink cheeks of big Mr. Cadwallader turned much pinker.
“My dear Mister Jones,” he said, “there is always a legitimate rivalry . . . a certain tenseness of honest competition. But as for a scoop which leaves the other fellow flat . . . I mean, a scoop of this importance . . . there is such a thing as sharing our good fortune. Turn and turn about is a very good mode for a . . .”
“Cadwallader,” said Jimmy Jones, “there’s only one thing that I’ll talk to you about, and that’s the price of the Jasper Journal. I’ll make a special figure to you. Fifty thousand dollars cash. Does that interest you?”
“Fifty . . . thousand . . . dollars?” gasped Cadwallader. “For a paper that . . . that’s dead! Fifty thousand . . . I wouldn’t give fifty thousand cents for your damned rag, Jones!”
“Good,” said Jimmy Jones. “Now get out of my office before I kick you out. You look like a stuffed shirt to me. You’re as crooked as you’re fat, I hear. And we hate crooks in the Jasper Journal.”
Cadwallader made half a step forward until he saw the blue of Jimmy’s eyes turn as pale, let us say, as the sun-bleached blue of an August day. Then Cadwallader took a long step to the rear and left the office.
“If it’s war that you want,” he said, “I’m going to smash you. I’m going to wreck your rotten plant. A cowboy editor, eh? Hell!” He slammed the door and went.
“Well?” asked Parson, looking up and pushing himself back from his typewriter, where he had been writing steadily the sentence: THE QUICK RED FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY BROWN DOG.
“Take it easy, Joe,” said Jimmy Jones. “The Jasper Bugle has just realized that there’s another paper in town, and the owner is taking it a little hard. Can you blame him?”
“By Saturday night he’ll stop worrying. There won’t be anything but ashes left on this ground, Jimmy.”
There was another knock at the front door. Parson again beat his typewriter with a rapid rhythm. Jimmy opened the door upon the slender figure of Ruth Denham. She gave him a wan smile and looked fixedly at him with big, frightened eyes as though she were afraid that he was going to strike her.
As she shook hands, she said: “I’ve come to beg you to tell me what you know about the death of my father, Mister Jones.”
“Miss Denham,” he said, “I’d certainly be glad to oblige you if this weren’t a special edition. But you know how it is with special editions. We can’t let the news leak out. Special editions are a sort of sacred ground, as you might say. Come right in and sit down.”
She paused, shaking her head and still watching him in that frightened way. “In those handbills that you printed today,” she said, “you intimated that my father was murdered. Will you tell me whether or not you have any proof of that?”
“Your father,” said Jimmy Jones gravely, “certainly was not killed by accident.”
The girl turned white, and that made her eyes bluer and bigger.
Joe Parson had ceased rattling his typewriter.
“Can’t you sit down?” asked Jimmy Jones.
“I can’t,” she protested.
“Did Harry Burwell tell you to stay standing?” he asked.
“Harry?” she murmured, surprised.
“He sent you in here, didn’t he?”
“Harry? No . . . I mean . . .” She broke down, staring with wider eyes than ever.
“He asked you to come in and find out what you could?” insisted Jimmy Jones.
“Haven’t I almost a right to know what I can?” she asked.
“Except that it’s a special edition,” answered Jimmy glibly. “But why won’t Ha
rry tell you how your father was killed?”
“Do you think . . . ?” she began.
“What I think doesn’t matter . . . and what I know will be carried in Saturday’s paper,” said Jimmy.
“I can’t tell,” said the girl, “whether you are simply bluffing or whether you really know something.”
“Saturday’s paper will tell,” he answered firmly. “But the fact is that you’ve had your own suspicions about the death of your father.”
“No, no!” cried the girl. “I only thought . . .”
“Were the Burwells with him at the time?”
“Don’t you know that they were both away from the campfire?” she asked. “But I’ve always thought that if Father had lived a little longer, he might have told . . .”
“What?” asked Jimmy Jones.
She shook her head. Then she added rapidly: “Mister Jones, there is one thing I can tell you. There may be danger for you in Jasper. I know that there are men who feel very strongly against you.”
“Thanks,” said Jimmy Jones, “but a yellow editor is worse than a yellow dog. All the truth and nothing but the truth is what we have sworn to print.”
“Do you know that your life . . . ?” she began.
“That’s easy,” he said. “We all have to die sometime.”
She was silent, watching him for a moment.
“But if there is anything you know that may help me to the full truth . . .,” he said.
At this she took a quick breath. “I know that it was murder!” cried the girl.
“You do, eh?” asked Jimmy Jones, a queer prickling running up his spinal marrow. “What makes you know that?”
“By nothing that I can prove, but simply through knowing my father. It’s supposed that the revolver discharged when he was cleaning it. But I know that he was so precise and careful that he never would have made such a mistake. He taught me how to take care of guns and how to keep them pointed away. In his entire life he never made a careless motion.”
“If he was shot by another man, why haven’t the Burwells told us about it?” asked Jimmy Jones.
“Because, when they ran in to him after they heard the sound of the shot, he was already almost breathless. As Harry carried him all those three miles . . . what a glorious thing that was to do! . . . my father used his last breath to talk not about himself but about me. He begged Harry Burwell to take care of me, and then, before he could say how he had been wounded, he died.” Her eyes filled with tears. Then she added: “Does what you know fit in with what I’ve told you?”