I decided that that was it. There wasn’t anything more that I could say that couldn’t weaken my case. I decided I’d better shut up. I did shut up.
It seemed like a long, long time before he said anything. He was staring at the wall over my head. When he answered what I’d said, he still didn’t say anything. He did better, a lot better.
He picked up the whisky in front of him. I got mine picked up in time to down it as he took a sip of his. He made a face.
“Tastes horrible,” he said. “Doc, do you really like this stuff?”
“No,” I told him. “I hate the taste of it. You’re right, Clyde, it is horrible.”
He looked at the glass in his hand and shuddered a little. I said, “Don’t drink it. That sip you took proved your point. And don’t try to toss it off; you’ll probably choke.”
He said, “I suppose you have to learn to like it. Doc, I’ve drunk a little wine a few times, not recently, but I didn’t dislike it too much. Does Mr. Wheeler have any wine?”
“The name is Smiley,” I said, “and he does.” I stood up. I clapped him on the back, and it was the first time in my life I’d ever done so. I said, “Come on, Clyde, let’s see what the boys in the back room will have.”
I took him over to the bar, to Pete and Smiley. I told Smiley,
“We want a round, and it’s on Clyde. Wine for him, and I’ll take a short beer this time; I’ve got to rewrite a paper tonight.”
I frowned at Smiley because of the utterly amazed look on his face, and he got the hint and straightened it out. He said, “Sure, Mr. Andrews. What kind of wine?”
“Do you have sherry, Mr. Wheeler?”
I said, “Clyde, meet Smiley. Smiley, Clyde.”
Smiley laughed, and Clyde smiled. The smile was a bit stiff, and would take practice, but I knew and knew damned well that Harvey Andrews wasn’t going to run away from home again.
He was going, henceforth, to have a father who was human. Oh, I don’t mean that I expected Clyde suddenly to turn into Smiley’s best customer. Maybe he’d never come back to Smiley’s again. But by ordering one drink—even of wine—across a bar, he’d crossed a Rubicon. He wasn’t perfect any more.
I was beginning to feel my own drinks again and I didn’t really want the one Clyde bought for me, but it was an Occasion, so I took it. But I was getting in a hurry to get back across the street to the Clarion and get to work on all the stories I had to write, so I downed it fairly quickly and Pete and I left. Clyde left when we did, because he wanted to get back to his son; I didn’t blame him for that.
At the Clarion, Pete checked the pot on the Linotype—and found it hot enough—while I pulled up the typewriter stand beside my desk and started abusing the ancient Underwood. I figured that, with the dope in the fact detective magazine Smiley had given me for background, I could run it to three or four columns, so I had a lot of work ahead of me. The escaped looney and Carl could wait—now that the former was captured and now that I knew Carl was safe—until I got the main story done.
I told Pete, while he was waiting for the first take, to hand set a banner head, “TAVERNKEEPER CAPTURES WANTED KILLERS,” to see if it would fit. Oh, sure, I was going to put myself in the story, too, but I was going to make Smiley the hero of it, for one simple reason. He had been.
Pete had the head set up—and it fitted—by the time I had a take for him to start setting on the machine.
In the middle of the second take I realized that I didn’t know for sure that Bat Masters was still alive, although I’d put it that way in the lead. I might as well find out for sure that he really was, and what condition he was in.
I knew better than to call the hospital for anything more detailed than whether he was dead or not, so I picked up the phone and called the state police office at Watertown. Willie Feeble answered.
He said, “Sure, Doc, he’s alive. He’s even been conscious and talked some. Thinks he’s dying, so he really opened up.”
“Is he dying?”
“Sure, but not the way he thinks. It’ll cost the state some kilowatts. And he can’t beat the rap; they’ve got the whole gang cold, once they catch them. There were six people—two of ’em women—killed in that bank job they pulled at Colby.”
“Was George in on that?”
“Sure. He was the one that shot the women. One was a teller and the other one was a customer who was too scared to move when they told her to lie flat.”
That made me feel a little better about what had happened to George. Not that it had worried me too much.
I said, “Then I can put in the story that Bat Masters confesses?”
“I dunno about that, Doc. Captain Evans is at the hospital talking to him now, and we had one report here that Masters is talking, but not the details. I don’t think the cap would even bother asking him about that stuff.”
“What would he ask him, then?”
“The rest of the mob, where they are There are two others besides Gene Kelley, and it’d be a real break if the cap can get out of Masters something that would help us find the others. Especially Kelley. The two we got tonight are peanuts compared to Kelley.”
I said, “Thanks a lot, Willie. Listen, if anything more breaks on the story, will you give me a ring? I’ll be here at the Clarion for a while yet.”
“Sure,” he said. “So long.”
I hung up and went back to the story. It went sweetly. I was on the fourth take when the phone rang and it was Captain Evans of the state police, calling from the hospital where they’d taken Masters. He’d just phoned Watertown and knew about my call there.
He said, “Mr. Stoeger? You going to be there another fifteen or twenty minutes?”
I was probably going to be working another several hours, I told him.
“Fine,” he said, “I’ll drive right around.”
That was duck soup; I’d have my story about his questioning Masters right from the horse’s mouth. So I didn’t bother asking him any questions over the phone.
And I found myself, when I’d finished that take, up to the point in the story where the questioning of Masters should come, so I decided I might as well wait until I’d talked to Evans, since he was going to be here so soon.
Meanwhile I might as well start checking on the other two stories again. I called Carl Trenholm, still got no answer. I called the county asylum.
Dr. Buchan, the superintendent, wasn’t there, the girl at the switchboard told me; she asked if I wanted to talk to his assistant and I said yes.
She put him on and before I’d finished explaining who I was and what I wanted, he’d interrupted me. “He’s on his way over to see you now, Mr. Stoeger. You’re at the Clarion office?”
“Yes,” I said, “I’m here now. And you say Dr. Buchan’s on his way? That’s fine.”
My stories were coming to me, I thought happily, as I put the phone back. Both Captain Evans and Dr. Buchan. Now if only Carl would drop in too and explain what had happened to him.
He did. Not that exact second, but only about two minutes later. I’d wandered over to the stone and was looking gloatingly at the horrible front page with no news on it and thinking how lovely it was going to look a couple of hours from now and listening with pleasure to the click of the mats down the channels of the Linotype, when the door opened and Carl walked in.
His clothes were a little dusty and dishevelled; he had a big patch of adhesive tape on his forehead and his eyes looked a little bleary. He had a sheepish grin.
He said, “Hi, Doc. How’s everything?”
“Wonderful,” I told him. “What happened to you Carl?”
“That’s what I dropped in to tell you, Doc. Thought you might get a garbled version of it and be worried about me.”
“I couldn’t even get a garbled version. No version at all; the hospital wouldn’t give. What happened?”
“Got drunk. Went for a walk out the pike to sober up and got so woozy I had to lie down a minute, so I headed for the grassy stri
p the other side of the ditch alongside the road and—well, my foot slipped as I was stepping across the ditch and the ground, with a chunk of rock in its hand, reached up and slapped me in the face.”
“Who found you, Carl?” I asked him.
He chuckled. “I don’t even know. I woke up—or came to—in the sheriff’s car on the way to the hospital. Tried to talk him out of taking me there, but he insisted. They checked me for a concussion and let me go.”
“How do you feel now?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Well,” I said, “maybe not. Want a drink?”
He shuddered. I didn’t insist. Instead, I asked him where he’d been since he’d left the hospital.
“Drinking black coffee at the Greasy Spoon. Think I’m able to make it home by now. In fact, I’m on my way. But I knew you’d have heard about it and thought you might as well have the—uh—facts straight in case—uh——”
“Don’t be an ass, Carl,” I told him. “You don’t rate a stick of type, even if you wanted it. And, by the way, Smiley gave me the inside dope on Bonney’s divorce, so I cut down the story to essentials and cut out the charges against Bonney.”
“That’s swell of you, Doc.”
“Why didn’t you tell me the truth about it yourself?” I asked him. “Afraid of interfering with the freedom of the press? Or of taking advantage of a friendship?”
“Well—somewhere in between, I guess. Anyway, thanks. Well, maybe I’ll see you tomorrow. If I live that long.”
He left and I wandered back to my desk. The Linotype was caught up to the typewriter by now, and I hoped Evans would show up soon—or Dr. Buchan from the asylum—so I could get ahead with at least one of the stories and not keep Pete working any later than necessary. For myself, I didn’t give a damn. I was too keyed up to have been able to sleep anyway.
Well, there was one thing we could be doing to save time later. We went over to the stone and started pulling all the filler items out of the back pages so we could move back the least important stories on page one to make room for the two big stories we still had coming. We’d need at least two full page one columns—and more if we could manage it—for the capture of the bank robbers and the escape of the maniac.
We were just getting the pages unlocked, though, when Dr. Buchan came in. An elderly lady—she looked vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn’t place her—was with him.
She smiled at me and said. “Do you remember me, Mr. Stoeger?” And the smile did it; I did remember her. She’d lived next door to me when I was a kid, forty-some years ago, and she’d given me cookies. And I remembered now that, while I was away at college, I’d heard that she had gone mildly, not dangerously, insane and had been taken to the asylum. That must have been—Good Lord—thirty-some years ago. She must be well over seventy by now. And her name was——
“Certainly, Mrs. Griswald,” I told her. “I even remember the cookies and candy you used to give me.”
And I smiled back at her. She looked so happy that one couldn’t help smiling back at her.
She said, “I’m so glad you remember, Mr. Stoeger. I want you to do me a big favour—and I’m so glad you remember those days, because maybe you’ll do it for me. Dr. Buchan—he’s so wonderful—offered to bring me here so I could ask you. I—I really wasn’t running away this evening. I was just confused. The door was open and I forgot. I was thinking that it was forty years ago and I wondered what I was doing there and why I wasn’t home with Otto, and so I just started home, that’s all. And by the time I remembered that Otto was dead for so long and that I was——”
The smile was tremulous now, and there were tears in her eyes. “Well, by that time I was lost and couldn’t find my way back, until they found me. I even—tried to find my way back, once I remembered and knew where I was supposed to be.”
I glanced over her head at tall Dr. Buchan and he nodded to me. But I still didn’t know what it was all about. I didn’t see, so I said, “I see, Mrs. Griswald.”
Her smile was back. She nodded brightly. “Then you won’t put it in the paper? About my wandering away, I mean? Because I didn’t really mean to do it. And Clara, my daughter, lives in Springfield now, but she still subscribes to your paper for news from home, and if she reads in the Clarion that I—escaped—she’ll think I’m not happy there and it’ll worry her. And I am happy, Mr. Stoeger—Dr. Buchan is wonderful to me—and I don’t want to make Clara unhappy or have her worry about me, and—you won’t write it up, will you?”
I patted her shoulder gently. I said, “Of course not, Mrs. Griswald.”
And then suddenly she was against my chest, crying, and I was embarrassed as hell. Until Dr. Buchan pulled her gently away and started her toward the door. He stepped back a second and said to me so quietly that she couldn’t hear, “It’s straight, Stoeger. I mean, it probably would worry her daughter a lot and she really wasn’t escaping—she just wandered off. And her daughter really does read your paper.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t mention it.”
Past him, I could see the door open and Captain Evans of the state police was coming in. He left the door open and Mrs. Griswald was wandering through it.
Dr. Buchan shook hands quickly. He said, “Thanks a lot, then. And on my behalf as well as Mrs. Griswald’s. It doesn’t do an institution like ours any good to have publicity on escapes, of course. Not that I’d have asked you, myself, to suppress the story on that account. But since our patient had a really good, legitimate, reason to ask you not to——”
He happened to turn and see that his patient was already heading down the stairs. He hurried after her before she could again become confused and wander into limbo.
Another story gone, I thought, as I shook hands with Evans. Those cookies had been expensive—if worth it. I thought, suddenly, of all the stories I’d had to kill tonight. The bank burglary—for good and obvious reasons. Carl’s accident—because it had been trivial after all, and writing it up would have hurt his reputation as a lawyer. The accident in the Roman candle department, because it might have lost Mrs. Carr’s husband a needed job. Ralph Bonney’s divorce—well, not killed, exactly, but played down from a long, important story to a short news item. Mrs. Griswald’s escape from the asylum—because she’d given me cookies once and because it would have worried her daughter. Even the auction sale at the Baptist Church—for the most obvious reason of all, that it had been called off.
But what the hell did any of that matter as long as I had one really big story left, the biggest of them all? And there wasn’t any conceivable reason why I couldn’t print that one.
Captain Evans took the seat I pulled up for him by my desk and I sank back into the swivel chair and got a pencil ready for what he was going to tell me.
“Thanks a hell of a lot for coming here, Cap. Now what’s the score about what you got out of Masters?”
He pushed his hat back on his head and frowned. He said, “I’m sorry, Doc. I’m going to have to ask you—on orders from the top—not to run the story at all.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
I DON’T know what my face looked like. I know I dropped the pencil and that I had to clear my throat when what I started to say wouldn’t come out the first time.
The second time, it came out, if a bit querulously. “Cap, you’re kidding me. You can’t really mean it. The one big thing that’s ever happened here—Is this a gag?”
He shook his head. “Nope, Doc. It’s the McCoy. It comes right from the chief himself. I can’t make you hold back the story, naturally. But I want to tell you the facts and I hope you’ll decide to.”
I breathed a little more freely when he said he couldn’t make me hold it back. It wouldn’t hurt me to listen, politely.
“Go ahead,” I told him.
“It had better be good.”
He leaned forward. “It’s this way, Doc. This Gene Kelley mob is nasty stuff. Real killers. I guess you found that out tonight about two of them. And, by the way, you did a damn good job.”
“Smiley Wheeler did. I just went along for the ride.”
It was a weak joke, but he laughed at it. Probably just to please me. He said, “If we can keep it quiet for about forty more hours—till Saturday afternoon—we can break up the gang completely. Including the big shot himself, Gene Kelley.”
“Why Saturday afternoon?”
“Masters and Kramer had a date for Saturday afternoon with Kelley and the rest of the mob. At a hotel in Gary, Indiana. They’ve been separated since their last job, and they’d arranged that date to get together for the next one, see? When Kelley and the others show up for that date, well, we’ve got ’em.
“That is, unless the news gets out that Masters and Kramer are already in the bag. Then Kelley and company won’t show up.”
“Why can’t we twist one little thing in the story,” I suggested. “Just say Masters and Kramer were both dead?”
He shook his head. “The other boys wouldn’t take any chances. Nope, if they know our two boys were either caught or killed, they’ll stay away from Gary in droves.”
I sighed. I knew it wouldn’t work, but I said hopefully, “Maybe none of the gang members reads the Carmel City Clarion.”
“You know better than that, Doc. Other papers all over the country would pick it up. The Saturday morning papers would have it, even if the Friday evening editions didn’t get it.” He had a sudden thought and looked startled. “Say, Doc, who represents the news services here? Have they got the story yet?”
“I represent them,” I said sadly. “But I hadn’t wired either of them on this yet. I was going to wait till my own paper was out. They’d have fired me, sure, and it would have cost me a few bucks a year, but for once I was going to have a big story break in my own paper before I threw it to the wolves.”
Night of the Jabberwock Page 9