by Talbot Mundy
“Oh, Conchita! Oh, honey! Oh, my poor darling baby! Oh, how could the Holy Virgin let this happen!”
The door was locked, for she heard people knocking but no one could get in. Once Consuelo went to the door, she remembered, and scolded through it — scolded scandalously. There were threats from some one in the passage, and she thought she heard Wahl’s voice, and cried out!
“Don’t let him in! Don’t you dare let him in! He’s the devil, Consuelo!”
After that there was nothing to remember except agony of mind and emptiness — grief too dreadful to be recognized for what it was, transmuting itself into physical pain, when her thought grew too numb to register impressions, and racking her whole body in nervous torture until she screamed aloud. No unconsciousness. No peace. No hiding-place from something indescribable — not a thought, for it had no name — nor a thing, for it was shapeless — but a haunting pale-green fear that she felt, that she knew would hound her until she turned on it.
And she was too afraid to turn on it — did not know how. And Desmio was gone forever. She cried aloud to God to bring him back to life and to let her die instead of him, while Consuelo tried to comfort her, coaxing.
“Hush, honey! Hush, Conchita! Oh, my baby dear, you don’t know what you’re saying, child! Oh, honey dear, do hush!”
CHAPTER 12.
“Me — I’m made!”
Wahl was in his element. First on the scene — the only man who had thought of watching Jack Calhoun — witness of the last half of the tragedy — personal success at stake — he went to work with the cold determined zeal of the kind that crowns efforts. He could visualize the headlines, even hear the newsboys, while he conned the situation.
He made no notes, asked hardly any questions. No need. It was Wahl’s fingers that removed the marriage license from Jack Calhoun’s side-pocket; his eyes that read it first; and he put it back into the pocket lest the other reporters should see it too soon and spoil his “beat.” He had all the makings of a perfect scoop.
Jacqueline Lanier — beautiful, young, talented — convent- reared — cold-hearted — dancing like Herod’s daughter, while her lover looked on, throwing smiles to the gray-haired Miro, whom she was presently to marry for his money — guiltily startled as she sees her lover — flight — the lover pursues her to her bedroom — knows the way to it! — the lover pleads, offers to marry her at once, and shows the license — she sneers and refuses. Enter old Miro. High words. Double tragedy! Outcry? Fainting? Not a bit of it! Calmness — eyes full of mocking laughter! A modern Borgia! A Catherine de Medici at seventeen! Herodias!
Principals — the richest and best known planter in Louisiana, cousin of the famous gum-shoe magnate! The profligate son of the famous Frank Calhoun, who owned the most successful blockade-runners in the Civil War and afterward founded the Lion line of steamships in San Francisco — a man as well known in California as in the South! The orphan daughter of the last of the Laniers, a family that for generations past had been intimate with all the highest in the land, and the beauty of whose women was a by-word. Perfect! Why ask questions? Let the League of Nations and the next elections rot! Wahl had a story — a whale of a story!
There were questions, though, that he did ask. He had a gift for going straight to the meat of things and probing sources others overlooked. He found Donna Isabella — forced his way into her apartment — scandalized her into hysteria — and by darkly hinting that she might possibly be blamed, induced her to scream her version at him.
Jacqueline was a heartless, impudent, designing minx, who had nearly broken Don Andres’ and her own heart by flirting with Jack Calhoun, and then had hypnotized Don Andres to the point of marrying her, so that she might have his money and estates! But she had missed her mark, thank heaven! Don Andres’ death had come an hour too soon, and she was penniless. She, Isabella Miro, who had loved the girl and had tried to be kind and affectionate, had been rewarded by a plate of cakes thrown in her face. Mr. — what was his name? — Clinton Wahl must excuse her from further conversation; she was crushed on account of her dear brother’s death. And if truth were in question, she looked it. Wahl bowed himself out, and heard the key turn on the inside. Perfect! She would see no more reporters.
An effort then to find Jacqueline and force a confession from her; but there he failed. He discovered which room she was in by the sobbing and the cries of Consuelo trying to comfort her. He hammered on the door — used threats — tried to force the door down with his shoulder. But Consuelo answered threat for threat, and vowed she would kill him if he passed the threshold.
Then occurred what might have enlightened Wahl, if he had been seeking light and not sensation. There came a Negro footman down the passage; Wahl offered him twenty dollars to help force the door down. He was not much of a Negro — none too big; but he and Wahl could have broken the door between them. He showed the whites of his eyes, and Wahl raised the offer of twenty dollars to fifty. The next he knew, he was reeling backward along the passage from a smash in the jaw from the footman’s fist. There was plainly some one in the house besides her nurse who thought the world of Jacqueline. Negro footmen don’t hit white men in Louisiana without knowing they undertake a gruesome risk. Wahl might have drawn deductions, had he seen fit.
But rubbing his jaw, he ran into the garden, and around the house in search of the window of Consuelo’s room — found it — heard sobbing — and started to swing himself up on the window-sill. A Negro gardener came running, threatened him with a rake and began shouting for help. One beating by a Negro was enough for even Wahl’s enthusiasm, so he ran for his car and drove off in a whirl of dust for the nearest telegraph office, mapping out his story while he broke all speed-laws.
He would be in time for the evening edition in New Orleans and San Francisco, provided he rushed and had the copy at his finger’s ends; and that was his specialty — all brain work and no notes — clean copy, headlines and all. He could dictate it straight to the telegrapher if only the fellow had sufficient skill.
“Hunches beat a full house! I’d a hunch to cover this wedding,” he reflected. “Gee! The story of the year, and my first to the Tribune! I’ll bet I’m on my way to Frisco in a week! I’d a hunch Jack Calhoun would break out on the front page presently — and holy smoke, that Lanier girl’s a pippin! Me — I’m made!”
CHAPTER 13.
“Facts presented with a punch!”
There were no women on the San Francisco Tribune staff. John Covert Mansfield so decreed — the “Iron Old Man,” whose vitriolic pen and point of view, reinforced by a beaver’s energy, had raised the Tribune from tenth to third place among daily newspapers. He was more than owner and managing editor; he was the power, the newspaper itself, and notorious as the ablest and most exacting editor alive. It was an education — a cachet for advancement elsewhere — to have worked under Mansfield on the Tribune.
He had a son, so he must have had a wife, and there was a legend, seldom mentioned, that an unfortunate marriage had embittered him against all women. “Dad” Lawrence, the Tribune’s social reporter, who had been on the paper longer than any one except Mansfield himself, knew more about the facts than he generally cared to tell. “Dad” was privileged — almost intimate with Mansfield — even had a key to Mansfield’s so-called “cabin” in the mountains and spent his rare vacations up there, and was about the only man in the Tribune Building who ever dared to oppose the old man’s wishes or to criticize him to his face.
Once in a while, when the subject cropped up in some twenty-minute breathing spell between editions, Dad would have a word or two to say. He never entered into details, but he had his own philosophy of life, which differed in most respects from that of the Tribune as chalk does from cheese.
“I never married — and for the same reason that the old man never should have; only in his case there’s ten times more reason. Look at him, he has a hotel apartment, that he visits every other day or so, and there’s even a telephone beside
the bath. Most nights he sleeps on a couch in the office, and grudges the time spent eating and shaving. Eighteen hours out of twenty-four, he works; during five, he’s asleep, more or less; that leaves an hour for meals and all the rest of it. Where does a wife come in? He married the Tribune when he took it; over-tried for a while to be a bigamist — and failed. I don’t blame Mrs. Mansfield, or any other woman who would kick under such conditions. I don’t blame Mansfield either. He’s the Tribune. That’s all there is to him.”
“He’s sure got teeth!” said Barnes, the city editor. Barnes had just come out from a stormy session with Mansfield and spoke with feeling.
“He knows news! He can smell it. I believe there’s something in his bones that tells him half an hour before a story breaks,” remarked Gunning, of the telegraph desk. “He’s restless now.”
“You bet he is!” said Barnes. “He’ll walk me, if I don’t step on her.”
“He knows what the public wants, that’s his secret. And he feeds it to ’em peppered and smoking hot,” said Gunning. “Here she comes! — I told you — special-rush — exclusive — Clinton Wahl — that’s the New Orleans man — hello — Calverly-Calhoun — that’s the Lion Line outfit — Miro — Lanier — Gee whiz! Boy! The whole bench is asleep, Goddamit! Boy!”
Two minutes later Mansfield strode in, holding a roughly scribbled sheet of copy-paper in his right hand. He took no notice of any one, except the three at the telegraph desk at one end of the big news-room, where Dad and Barnes were watching Gunning. Gunning, pencil in hand, was reading telegrams, with his left hand ready to snatch the next sheet from the operator at the desk beside him. Saying nothing, Mansfield looked over Gunning’s shoulder, watching for several minutes as sheet after sheet of Wahl’s message came off the wire.
“Special!” he said, nodding. “Great stuff. Now, boys, for God’s sake don’t mess it this time! Boy! Tell Mr. Trig I want him.” He pulled out his watch. “We’ve forty minutes. Make over the whole front page and spread this on four columns thirty-six point head. Spike the Board of Trade stuff. Dad — cover Calhoun, and all the dope about his father. What do you know of the Laniers? Dig ’em out of the morgue, and play it uprush now!”
Dad ran to his desk. Trig came hurrying from the stone, wiping black hands on a cotton waste and dashed away again, grinning. Mansfield returned to his office to telephone the circulation manager, and a new, acute, accentuated din was added to the normal clatter of the news-room as the story of Jacqueline Lanier was rushed through the string of miracles that tread on one another’s heels in the throes of birth of a special edition — until the huge building began to tremble to the thump of mighty engines, and the big vans backed into the alley-ways to receive the finished bundled copies.
In the pause that followed, when the last big van had roared away, Dad strolled into Mansfield’s office and found him reading the front page, smiling over it.
“That’s a good story,” said Mansfield, looking up at Dad and laying down the paper. “I’m going to send for Wahl.”
“He has a fair ‘rep,’” Dad answered.
“‘Rep’ be damned! He has brains! He’s turned in a big beat! Give me one a day like that, and I’ll treble the circulation. Look at his stuff compared with yours! Good God, you’ve written up the Calverly-Calhouns as if they’d just donated something to the Y.M.C.A. — and the Laniers — old ladies’ tea-fight! Read Wahl’s stuff. There’s a man who knows how to cover a story.”
Dad picked up the paper and read the heavy black type down to the foot of the column. (His own was on the inside page.)
“It’s sensational enough,” he said presently.
“Sensational? It’s facts presented with a punch,”
“Oh, it’s cleverly written,” Dad conceded. “There’s nothing there, I suppose, that’s libelous. But suppose the facts have been misrepresented? Her reputation’s gone. It’s cruel.”
“Cruel? So is life!” said Mansfield. “We’re face to face with life. Our business is to let the public know what’s going on. News is the breath they breathe, and we supply it.”
“That’s the dope ring’s argument, and the bootleggers’ standby,” Dad retorted. “They claim they give the public what it wants. The question is — just what is news?”
Mansfield laughed. Dad’s point of view always amused him. He liked the man, and kept him on the paper more because he dared to beard him in his den than for any other reason.
“News is neither law, nor religion, nor morals; it’s sometimes about law, religion and morals — sometimes about other things. How often must I tell you that?” asked Mansfield with an air of rather weary patience. “The public pays, and calls the tune. We dance to it. A paper has to interest the public and anything that interests it is news. Come over here and watch.”
He walked to the window and beckoned Dad to follow him. For several minutes they stood in silence watching the home-going crowds on the sidewalk and the newsboys at the street-corner over the way yelling the “EXTRA”— “DOUBLE TRAGEDY!” headlines. They were selling papers as fast as they could hand them out.
“That, Dad, is news and what it does,” said Mansfield. “A peace conference in Europe, or a political convention, would sell less than half as many papers. That’s why I’m sending for Wahl, and why I’m troubled about my boy, Sherry.”
“What’s wrong with Sherry?” demanded Dad.
“Nothing but a sentimental streak. He’s soft somewhere. He’s bright — did splendidly at college — and he’s keen. I’ve taught him to mistrust women, and done all I can to toughen him. I don’t think he’ll fall for the usual traps and he’ll go far — but run a successful newspaper? — I doubt it. A man like Wahl may do him good. I think I’ll let Sherry work under Wahl for a year or so.”
“I’ve never met Wahl,” Dad answered, “but I love Sherry. He’s the nicest boy I know. I’ve read Wahl’s stuff, and I hate it. My bet is that Sherry has guts enough to stand off you and Wahl both, and to carve his own line.”
“We’ll see,” said Mansfield dryly. “Wahl has promised us a two-page feature and some photos for the Sunday Section. Let’s hope he lands a good one of the Lanier girl. Get all you can about Jack Calhoun’s record in Frisco, and be ready to feed Wahl the minute he comes. Let Wahl write the stuff, but feed him facts. And by the way, when Wahl comes, treat him nicely. Take him for a week-end to my cabin in the mountains, or something. Now get out of here — I’m busy!”
CHAPTER 14.
“Consuelo — what is a coroner?”
Women suffer more than men. For millions of years they have undergone the agony, while men provided it. Capacity to suffer is inherent in the whole sex, and to recover and forget in the joy of having brought forth. But where was joy for Jacqueline Lanier? What had she brought forth but disillusion?
She lay on the bed in Consuelo’s room during uncounted hours, eating when Consuelo told her to, not knowing what she ate, not caring what should happen, not even trying to escape one pang of grief; for she hoped the grief would kill her. She did not cry any longer; there was nothing left to cry about. She did not pray; there was nothing to pray for. When Consuelo knelt and prayed before the image of the Virgin on the little table in the corner, she watched and wondered dumbly what was the use.
Consuelo did much more than pray, however. She saved Jacqueline’s life — saved her reason. She recognized the instinct, that humans share with animals, to hide in a dark place when wounded. Consuelo drew the shades down, set furniture against the door, and held that fort against all comers, not wasting words on her patient when her own first paroxysms of despair were over, but watching, letting nature take its own course.
And it was no joke holding that fort. Police — one lone policeman, rather deferent, extremely curious, and not so sure of his rights. Then Donna Isabella.
“You may pack up and leave the house at once, Consuelo. I’m not going to keep you a minute longer.”
“You never kept me yet! I’m here in spite
of you! I’ll go when I’m ready, and no sooner!”
“Oh, very well, I’ll have to have you put out!”
“You dare! Just you dare, that’s all! Wait and see what I’ll say at the inquest! Wait till they ask me on oath who sent me with a letter to the convent from Calhoun! Wait till I’ve told all I know about you! I’ve not talked to the reporters yet. Turn me out of here, and straight I go to them!”
“You’re a false, ungrateful, wicked woman!” snarled Donna Isabella. “What is Jacqueline doing in your room?”
“Dying, for anything you’d care!”
“She may go to her own room and stay there until I send for her!”
“She’ll do nothing of the sort!”
“Well, your wages ceased yesterday. And Jacqueline has no claim on the estate. She may take her own belongings, but you may tell her not to look to me for—”
“She’ll find she has more friends than you have!” Consuelo snapped, and slammed the door in Donna Isabella’s face.
None of those encounters made the least impression on Jacqueline, though they were noisy enough. She heard, and simply did not care. Donna Isabella’s venom stung no longer, and there was no future — could be none — nothing but the vision of Desmio lying dead in a pool of blood, with Wahl’s terrible face looking into hers and saying “Now then, out with it!” She buried her face in the pillow and screamed when she thought of Wahl.
“It was the devil, Consuelo! Jack Calhoun cried out he was the devil’s own! He haunts me!”
“Hush, honey dear. You’ve never seen the devil and never will. Try to forget him.”
“I can’t. I see his face all the time!”
“Come, Conchita, drink a little warm milk, there’s a honey, and then sleep.”
She was obedient, but she could not sleep. But there was no time when Donna Isabella’s malice slept. They brought her the New Orleans papers — four or five of them — and all with screaming headlines, photographs of Don Andres Miro, Jacqueline, Jack Calhoun, and even of herself. Of leaded type the shame of the Miros stared her in the face, a million times more degrading than the gum shoe-maker’s half-page display on the back sheet.