The Star Reporter Mystery

by Norvin Pallas LLC

  While he was sitting in the reception room wondering what he ought to do next, the front door opened and Mr. Knight came in, somewhat breathless. He saw Ted, and greeted him with a friendly casualness.

  “Hello, there, Ted.”

  But Ted was in no mood to feel sociable. His wrist and biceps still hurt him, and he felt that Mr. Knight was just as bad as the others. Well, maybe not quite as bad, but Ted had no inclination to try to choose between various shades of black.

  “No hard feelings about what happened up in the cabin?” said Mr. Knight cheerfully. “I’ve grown quite attached to you and your brother, and I’d like to be friends with you.”

  “Why try to be friends with us? We don’t care much for Uglancie’s kind, and you seem to be just like the others.”

  “Oh, not like them, surely,” Mr. Knight objected. “Just because I took a job—”

  “That’s it. You didn’t care what happened to anybody. It was just a job to you.”

  “That isn’t quite fair, Ted. It was a job, but the job was to find Barry Knight. It didn’t include twisting the arm of a high-school boy. I’m an old man, Ted, and there wasn’t much I could do for you, but I did stop them from doing that, didn’t I? And the very fact that they had a witness to their threats is the best insurance you’ve got that they’ll never bother you again.”

  Yes, he had stopped them in his own quiet way, Ted recalled. Perhaps he did owe a debt to Mr. Knight after all.

  “But what about Barry Knight? Didn’t you care what happened to him?”

  “Yes, Ted, I did. I’d known Barry Knight slightly down on Short Vincent, heard a little more about him, and all of it good. Let’s look at the matter from my point of view. I was offered a job that involved a vacation trip, a generous expense account, and a five-hundred-dollar bonus in case we found Barry Knight. Well, we did find him, I’ve been paid off, and the job’s over. Wouldn’t you have taken a job like that?”

  “No.”

  “All right, then, let’s try looking at it from another point of view. I knew Barry Knight to be a fine, upstanding newspaperman with a good future ahead of him. But talking to Uglancie, I found out that there appeared to be some sort of ghost in Barry’s past. Well, what was the best thing to do? Could Barry go on, always dreading that this ghost might pop out and ruin him? Wouldn’t it be much better to bring the ghost into view right now, and help to slay it, so that it could never trouble him again? If I’ve helped Barry Knight to do that, he may someday regard me as the best friend he ever had.”

  There was a good deal of sense in what he said, Ted thought, and if he had managed to line his pockets with a goodly quantity of green stuff while he was doing it, wasn’t that fairly typical of the world?

  “Don’t judge people too harshly,” Mr. Knight went on. “Take Marty Grossen, for instance. I know you don’t think much of him, and quite frankly he’s nothing but a big ugly bruiser. He was a person of considerable ambition but didn’t have very much on the ball. Given this particular dilemma, this was about the most that life had to offer him.

  “Lister is another case. It was perfectly true, as he said to you, that he was once a young, sincere, ambitious person. His trouble was that in his drive to the top he accepted help from the wrong kind of people, and after he got there he found he couldn’t throw them off. Now he doesn’t care anymore. All he cares about is what’s in it for him. It may seem wrong to say it, but maybe it would be worse for him if he did care and still couldn’t do anything about it. As an embryonic newspaperman, you may be able to draw your own moral from some of these pitfalls that have trapped others. Excuse me for speaking so philosophically, but we often get to talking this way down on Short Vincent.”

  “What is this Short Vincent, anyway?” asked Ted, puzzled. “I think I’ve heard Ron mention it to me once or twice, but it didn’t seem to make much sense.”

  “I’ll tell you, Ted. I suppose every city or town has its quota of screwballs, but we happen to have an unusual concentration of them all at one spot. Barry Knight once wrote a story about this street, known as Short Vincent. From your newspaper experience you know that newspapermen don’t always find their stories—sometimes they create them. Now I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Barry created Short Vincent. I’ll put it to you this way: that if his story wasn’t entirely true at the time he wrote it, it became true afterward. After his story came out, everybody on Short Vincent began acting just the way he’d pictured them. They liked it, I guess, and picked it up.”

  “Are you one of those Short Vincent screwballs?” Ted asked.

  “I guess, Ted, that you know enough about me to realize I’m one of those people who’s always got an angle. Another person you may have heard about is Dixie Orlando, the man who always eats red jelly beans. His angle is his friendship with Barry. Now you know that newspapers try to keep advertising out of their news columns, and you know, too, that the distinction between publicity and advertising is one that is often difficult to draw. The Twilight Star is a newspaper that draws a particularly hard line on publicity. It’s said that it’s harder to get a story in the Star than in any other of the papers.

  “Now let’s assume someone has a special desire to get a certain item of publicity in the Star. Now if there’s a suggestion of publicity stunt or advertising angle about it, he knows better than to send it directly to the Star—their wastebasket is full of such things. Instead he goes to Dixie Orlando. Orlando whispers just a hint of it to Barry Knight. Knight thinks he’s just got a hot tip, follows it up, and because he’s produced the story himself instead of having it handed to him he thinks it’s great, and the story gets published. Newspaper reporters always like to dig up their own stories—or at least, that’s the pattern of this particular operation.”

  “Didn’t Knight know what was going on?”

  “Of course he did—he’s a pretty shrewd fellow. That’s why a good many of the fellows have been wishing for some time that the Star would send down a less experienced reporter. But very often Knight thought the story was good enough to use just the same. As long as the story appeared, Dixie Orlando was in a position to take credit for it, and to collect his pay-off from the person wanting the publicity in the first place. On the other hand, Knight often paid Orlando for some of his really good tips, so Orlando has a good thing coming from both sides.”

  “Is that the angle they have down on Short Vincent?” asked Ted.

  “That’s just one of the angles. On Short Vincent everybody’s got his own angle.”

  Life must often get pretty complicated on Short Vincent, Ted decided. But meanwhile he still had his own worry about Ronald’s safety and what was going on up in Lonely Valley. At the moment there seemed nothing to do about it except sit there and sweat it out.

  CHAPTER 20

  Which Story?

  Ronald with Barry Knight stood in tense silence as the rumble grew, until its crescendo sounded like the rolling of a thousand kettledrums. Then came a crash, followed by another and another, with others in such quick succession that one ran into the other and they could not be distinguished. There was one final crash, louder than the others, and then suddenly silence settled over the valley.

  “Avalanche!” Ronald exclaimed unnecessarily.

  “Not a real avalanche,” said Knight, more calmly. “The professor was getting so worried about the hill that he thought he couldn’t put it off any longer. Tonight was his time for touching off his explosions. There was a notice posted on the bulletin board at the lodge, but you developed a sudden addiction for the back door, and of course Bill Hudson had let the professor know that he didn’t favor that kind of talk at the table. There were other bulletins posted down at the village, and the flares must have been set out just after we passed. Besides, they chose to set the charges off during the night, when nobody would be around.”

  “At least you could have told me about it,” said Ronald resentfully.

  “I gave you your chance to go back if you wanted to.
Nothing’s going to happen except that we’ll be marooned up here for a couple of days. That suits my purpose fine, and I think you may find yourself just as well satisfied to be cut off from Lister for a few days.”

  “What’s Ted going to think?”

  “Bill Hudson knows the story. He’ll explain it to him.”

  Whether Ronald liked it or not, there was nothing he could do about it. Anyway, he knew he hadn’t yet heard the end of the story about Knight and Desmond, and he was anxious to get the remaining details. If only he were sure Ted would be able to deal with Lister—that was his chief worry.

  They pushed on to the cabin, which was lighted up and had a spiral of smoke easing lazily out the chimney. After knocking the loose snow off their overshoes, they went inside. The man who came out of the back room to greet them was about fifty, with his hair well streaked with gray and a friendly, welcoming smile on his face.

  “Dad, this is a colleague of mine, Ronald Wilford,” Knight introduced. “The paper sent him up to find me.”

  “They must feel you’re pretty important, son, to send a man like Mr. Wilford out after you. Make yourself at home, Mr. Wilford. I’ll take your coat.”

  The two young men stepped closer to the fireplace to warm themselves as Mr. Desmond left the room with their coats. When he returned, Knight said:

  “Wilford knows something about your invention, Dad. Maybe he’d like you to show it to him.”

  Mr. Desmond exhibited no reluctance as he picked up the lamp and led the way out the door to a lean-to built flush up against the cabin and fitted out as a workroom. It was cooler here, and the wind whistled through the chinks.

  Ronald saw what appeared to be a model of the invention, along with a good deal of other equipment scattered around that he didn’t understand at all. Speaking with much enthusiasm, Mr. Desmond gave some explanations. Most of it was over Ronald’s head, but he was able to gather that this was not just a battery, as he had been led to believe, but involved a modification of the ignition system.

  “What did Mr. Bogus think about it?” asked Knight.

  Mr. Desmond shot a quick glance at his son. “He agreed that I was working on an important new principle. The system works, make no mistake about that. But it’s too bulky, too expensive to manufacture, and too erratic in operation. It would take a considerable amount of research in more suitable materials and better engineering design before the battery becomes practical. He estimated that he’d have to set up a million-dollar laboratory to try to get the bugs out of it, and those estimates have a way of turning out to be two or three times too low.”

  “Is he going to do it?” Knight demanded.

  Mr. Desmond carefully picked up the lamp and led the way back into the cabin, closing the door after them. “I’m sorry, son, but he felt it was just too big a gamble.”

  “You mean he didn’t want to take a chance on a man with your prison record?” said Knight harshly.

  “He didn’t say so, but it’s quite possible that is what he was thinking. A huge contract like this would have to be justified to his board of directors.”

  “Wasn’t he worried that one of his competitors might get ahead of him?” Ronald questioned. “Or to put it another way, is there anything to stop you from going to one of his competitors?”

  “I seriously doubt that it would be any use. Are you familiar with the patent pool arrangement in the motor industry? What it amounts to is that the manufacturers all use each other’s patents. You understand the reason for it. One manufacturer may have an excellent carburetor, another an excellent crankshaft, and so on, but unless they pooled their patents it would be impossible for a customer to buy a car that had a good everything. Nevertheless, the system does have its drawbacks, one of them being that the corporations are less willing to invest large sums in basic research, from which their competitors could share the results.”

  “So you’ve lost out on a million-dollar contract because of a cheap little three-hundred-dollar robbery,” said Knight sourly.

  His father cast another quick glance at him. “No, Larry, I didn’t go to prison for a three-hundred-dollar robbery. If that had been all, I would certainly have had my sentence suspended. I went to prison because there was something else in my past, that early youthful error I’d made. I’ve never quite told you about it, and I won’t now, except to say that I had been running around with a gang that was rather wild. Although I didn’t do anything wrong myself, I tagged along with the others. I know that’s not a good defense, either morally or legally, and I have no complaint to make about the sentence I served in the reformatory—if it could only have ended there. But it didn’t end, and when something new came up, I was actually being punished once more for my earlier offense. That is why I would do almost anything I could to prevent a young person from making a mistake that might overshadow his whole future.”

  Knight turned upon Ronald suddenly. “All right, Wilford, you’ve got a pretty good idea how the whole affair went. I’ll put it up to you straight: Who stole that money from the cash register?”

  Ronald allowed his glance to move from son to father, and then slowly back to the son again. “I think I’ve known for quite some time, Knight. If your father didn’t take the money, and you’ve convinced me he didn’t, then there was only one other person who could have done it—yourself.”

  “You hit it squarely that time, Wilford,” said Knight savagely. “Let me congratulate you. Yes, I stole the money, and my father went to prison to protect me. Not only that, but he deliberately stayed there six years so that the law could never touch me afterward. Six years, and all that time I could have perhaps saved him by opening my mouth. I didn’t do it but eased my conscience by telling myself he could get out any time he wanted to by applying for a parole. That’s your story for you, Wilford, one that Uglancie and Lister would give their eyeteeth to get. It’s a swell feature, ought to make the front page, might even give you the byline you want. What kind of guy did you think I was, and what kind of guy do you think I am now?”

  His father interrupted quietly, “I don’t think it matters what Mr. Wilford thinks, Larry. The only thing of importance is what you think of yourself.”

  “Yes, but what am I supposed to think? There’s more to this story yet, Wilford. Better get out your pencil and take some notes, for you’ll want to be sure to get it straight… Because my mother died when I was very young, I was brought up by my dad. He did his best to give me a good home and upbringing, in fact gave me everything I needed and nearly everything I wanted. And how did I respond to this? I became spoiled and arrogant and thought if the world didn’t give me what I wanted, I’d simply take it.

  “I was a violin player of some promise, worked hard at it, and saw the possibility of a career in music. As I neared graduation, I received an offer from a musical conservatory for a partial scholarship. Unfortunately, my father wasn’t able to provide the rest of the funds I would need, and I felt that an opportunity like this would never come to me again.

  “So to get the money I needed, I simply helped myself from the cash register at the service station. I didn’t actually plan the robbery, but when the chance came, I took advantage of it. Of course, I didn’t intend that my father should be suspected of the robbery. I thought I could come back later in the evening, set off the burglar alarm, and escape. The trouble was that breaking the window would not set off the alarm. It aroused the people in the house next door who turned on a light and came to their front door to look out. I was scared, and high-tailed it for home, leaving the alarm still in operation, and sufficient evidence to send my father to prison. How about that, Dad? You knew all about it, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I knew,” his father replied. “It couldn’t have been anyone else. Besides, I heard you going out that night.”

  “Now, Wilford, comes the worst part of my miserable story—how I let my father go to trial for the crime, constantly trying to convince myself that my testimony wasn’t needed, and that my f
ather would be acquitted without it. The verdict of guilty was a terrible shock, but even then I didn’t speak up. I made excuses for myself—or rather, allowed other people to make excuses for me. I allowed myself to be persuaded there was nothing I could do for my father, and that he would be out in nine months for good behavior. Those nine months turned into six long, terrible, wasted years—years in which I was too ashamed even to write or visit him!”

  “You mustn’t worry about those six lost years, Larry,” Mr. Desmond reassured him. “I was able to continue my work, and my studies, and even made some new friendships. The thing I most regretted, however, was that I didn’t have the chance to be a father to you while you were growing up.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” Barry answered, the intense bitterness still ringing through his voice, “for trying to help soothe my conscience, but it’s not as simple as that. Actually I’ve done only one thing of which I am proud. When you left prison, I was shocked that you didn’t look me up and apparently wanted nothing to do with me. I decided then I would find you, and if it seemed best for you to let the story be forgotten, I would do so. But if your vindication required making the story public, I would write it up—and that was the reason, Wilford, why I didn’t know whether I could ever go back to the newspaper or not.

  “But even then I found that the decision was no longer mine. There was Freddie Uglancie, waiting to use anything that might discredit me, and there was Mr. Bogus, who was negotiating for the invention. Dad made me promise I would do nothing until Mr. Bogus had made up his mind; but I had already determined that if my father lost this contract because of me, there was nothing in the world that could make me be silent any longer. That is still my decision, Dad. You know I’m right, don’t you?”

  Mr. Knight looked proud as he answered, “What I did was for a boy, Larry, but now you’re a man and have to make a man’s decisions.”

  He turned to Ronald with an eager look. “I’m glad to see that you haven’t been taking any notes, Mr. Wilford, for I’ve a different version of this story to give you. I was a dreamer who thought only of an indefinite someday when my invention would bring me wealth and success and make my son proud of me. I forgot that my son was growing up day by day and needed my attention and companionship and a better living than I provided. He has said that I gave him nearly everything he needed or wanted, but that was only because he asked so little of me.