There was no way of telling that one of those local items was infinitely more important to the future of John Mac Veagh and of Grover itself than the front-page story.
MacVeagh woke up around two on Wednesday afternoon. They’d worked all night on the extra, he and Molly and Luke. He’d never thought at the time to wonder where the coffee came from that kept them going; he realized now it must have been Molly who supplied it.
But they’d got out the extra; that was the main thing. Sensationalism? Vultures, as Molly had said? Maybe he might have thought so before H. A. Hitchcock’s visit. Maybe another approach, along those lines, might have gained Hitchcock’s end. But he knew, as well as any man can ever know his own motives, that the driving force that carried them through last night’s frantic activity was no lust for sensationalism, no greed for sales, but a clean, intense desire to print the truth for Grover.
The fight wasn’t over. The extra was only the start. Tomorrow he would be preparing Friday’s regular issue, and in that—
The first stop, he decided, was the station. It might be possible to get something out of Chief Hanby. Though he doubted if the chief was clear enough of debt to Manson’s bank, to say nothing of political obligations, to take a very firm stand against H. A. Hitchcock.
MacVeagh met her in the anteroom of the station. She was coming out of the chief’s private office, and Phil Rogers was with her. He had just his normal pallor now, and looked almost human. Still not human enough, though, to justify the smile she was giving him and the way her hand rested on his arm.
That smile lit up the dark, dusty little office. It hardly mattered that she wasn’t smiling at MacVeagh. Her smile was beauty itself, in the absolute, no matter who it was aimed at. Her every movement was beauty, and her clothes were a part of her, so that they and her lithe flesh made one smooth loveliness.
And this was H. A. Hitchcock’s daughter Laura, and MacVeagh was more tongue-tied than he usually was in her presence. He never could approach her without feeling like a high school junior trying to get up nerve to date the belle of the class.
“Laura—” he said.
She had a copy of the extra in one hand. Her fingers twitched it as she said, “I don’t think there is anything we could possibly say to each other, Mr. MacVeagh.”
Philip Rogers was obviously repressing a snicker. MacVeagh turned to him. “I’m glad to see you looking better, Phil. I was worried about you last night. Tell me: how did you happen to find the body?”
Laura jerked at Philip’s arm. “Come on, Phil. Don’t be afraid of the big, bad editor.”
Philip smiled, in the style that best suited his pallid profile. “Quite a journalistic achievement, this extra, Johnny. More credit to your spirit than to your judgment, but quite an achievement. Of course, you were far too carried away by it all to do any proofreading?”
“Come on, Phil.”
“Hold it, Laura. I can’t resist showing our fearless young journalist his triumph of accuracy. Look, Johnny. He took the paper from her and pointed to an inside page. “Your account of Old Man Herkimer’s funeral: ‘Today under the old oaks of Mountain View Cemetery, the last rites of Josephus R. Herkimer, 17, of this city—’” He laughed. “The old boy ought to enjoy that posthumous youth.”
“Seventeen, seventy-seven!” MacVeagh snorted. “If that’s all that’s gone wrong in that edition, I’m a miracle man. But, Laura—”
“You’re quite right, Mr. MacVeagh. There are far worse things wrong with that edition than the misprint that amuses Philip.”
“Will you be home tonight?” he said with harsh abruptness.
“For you, Mr. MacVeagh, I shall never be home. Good day.”
Philip followed her. He looked over his shoulder once and grinned, never knowing how close his pallid profile came to being smashed forever.
Chief Hanby was frowning miserably as MacVeagh came into the office. The delicate smoke of his cigar indicated one far above his usual standard—it was easy to guess its source—but he wasn’t enjoying it.
“‘Render therefore unto Caesar,’” he said, “‘the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.’ Matthew, twenty-two, twenty-one. Only who knows which is which?”
“Troubles, Chief?” MacVeagh asked.
Chief Hanby had a copy of the extra on his desk. His hand touched it almost reverently as he spoke. “He went to see you, John?”
“Yeah.”
“And still you printed this? You’re a brave man, John, a brave man.”
“You’re no coward yourself, Chief. Remember when Nose O’Leary escaped from the state pen and decided Grover’d make a nice hide-out?”
The chief’s eyes glowed with the memory of that past exploit. “But that was different, John. A man can maybe risk his life when he can’t risk— I’ll tell you this much: I’m not talking to you, not right now. Nothing’s settled, nothing’s ripe, I don’t know a thing. But I’m still groping. And I’m not going to stop groping. And if I grope out an answer to anything—whatever the answer is, you’ll get it.”
MacVeagh thrust out his hand. “I couldn’t ask fairer than that, Chief. We both want the truth, and between us we’ll get it.”
Chief Hanby looked relieved. “I wouldn’t blame H. A. too much John. Remember, he’s under a strain. These labor troubles are getting him, and with the election coming up at the plant—”
“And whose fault are the troubles? Father Byrne’s committee suggested a compromise and a labor-management plan. The men were willing enough—”
“Even they aren’t any more. Not since Bricker took over. We’ve all got our troubles. Take Jake Willis, now— Why, speak of the devil!”
The coroner looked as though he could easily take a prize for worried expression away from even MacVeagh and the chief. The greeting didn’t help it. He said, “There’s too much loose talk about devils. It’s as barbarous as swearing by God.” But his heart wasn’t in his conventional protest.
“What is the matter, Jake?” the chief asked. “You aren’t worried just on account of you’ve got an inquest coming up, are you?”
“No, it ain’t that—” His eyes rested distrustfully on MacVeagh.
“Off the record,” said the editor. “You’ve my word.”
“All right, only— No. It ain’t no use. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. … Either of you going back past my establishment?”
The chief was tied to his office. But John MacVeagh went along, his curiosity stimulated. His questions received no answers. Jake Willis simply plodded along South Street like a man ridden by the devils in which he refused to believe.
And what, MacVeagh asked himself, would Jake think of a tramp printer who claimed to grant wishes? For the matter of that, what do I think— But there was too much else going on for him to spare much thought for Whalen Smith.
Jake Willis led the way past his assistant without a nod, on back into the chapel. There was a casket in place there, duly embanked with floral tributes. The folding chairs were set up; there was a Bible on the lectern and music on the organ. The stage was completely set for a funeral, and MacVeagh remembered about Old Man Herkimer.
“They’re due here at three thirty,” Jake whined. “And how’ll I dare show it to ’em? I don’t know how it happened. Jimmy, he swears he don’t know a thing neither. God knows!” he concluded in a despairing rejection of his skepticism.
“It is Old Man Herkimer?"
“It ought to be. That’s what I put in there yesterday, Old Man Herkimer’s body. And I go to look at it today and—”
The face plate of the coffin was closed. “I’m going to have to leave it that way,” he said. “I can’t let ’em see— I’ll have to tell ’em confidential-like that he looked too— I don’t know. I’ll have to think of something.”
He opened up the plate. MacVeagh looked in. It was a Herkimer, all right. There was no mistaking the wide-set eyes and thin lips of that clan. But Old Man Herkimer, as the original c
opy for the item in the extra had read, was seventy-seven when he died. The boy in the coffin—
“Don’t look a day over seventeen, does he?” said Jake Willis.
“Father Byrne,” said John MacVeagh, “I’m asking you this, not as a priest, but as the best-read scholar in Grover: Do miracles happen?”
Father Byrne smiled. “It’s hard not to reply as a priest; but I’ll try. Do miracles happen? By dictionary definition, I’ll say yes; certainly.” He crossed the study to the stand that held the large unabridged volume. “Here’s what Webster calls a miracle: ‘An event or effect in the physical world beyond or out of the ordinary course of things, deviating from the known laws of nature, or,’ and this should be put in italics, ‘or transcending our knowledge of those laws’”
MacVeagh nodded. “I see. We obviously don’t know all the laws. We’re still learning them. And what doesn’t fit in with the little we know—”
“‘An event,’” the priest read on, “‘which cannot be accounted for by any of the known forces of nature and which is, therefore, attributed to a supernatural force.’ So you see, miraculousness is more in the attitude of the beholder than in the nature of the fact.”
“And the logical reaction of a reasonable man confronted with an apparent miracle would be to test it by scientific method, to try to find the as yet unknown natural law behind it?”
“I should think so. Again being careful not to speak as a priest.”
“Thanks, Father.”
“But what brings all this up, John? Don’t tell me you have been hearing voices or such? I’d have more hope of converting an atheist like Jake to the supernatural than a good hardheaded agnostic like you.”
“Nothing, Father. I just got to thinking— Let you know if anything comes of it.”
Philip Rogers was waiting for MacVeagh at the Sentinel office. There was a puzzling splash of bright red on his white cheek. Molly was there, too, typing with furious concentration.
“I want to talk you you alone, Johnny,” Rogers said.
Molly started to rise, but MacVeagh said, “Stick around. Handy things sometimes, witnesses. Well, Philip?”
Philip Rogers glared at the girl. “I just wanted to give you a friendly warning, Johnny. You know as personnel manager out at the plant I get a pretty good notion of how the men are feeling.”
“Too bad you’ve never put it over to H. A., then.”
Philip shrugged. “I don’t mean the reds and the malcontents. Let Bricker speak for them—while he’s still able. I mean the good, solid American workers, that understand the plant and the management.”
“H. A.’s company stooges, in short. OK., Phil, so what are they thinking?”
“They don’t like the way you’re playing up this murder. They think you ought to show a little sympathy for the boss in his bereavement. They think he’s got troubles enough with Bricker and the Congressional committee.”
MacVeagh smiled. “Now I get it.”
“Get what?”
“I’d forgotten about the committee. So that’s what’s back of all the hush-hush. A breath of scandal, a suspicion that there might be a murderer in the Hitchcock clan—it could so easily sway a congressman who was trying to evaluate the motives behind H. A.’s deals. He’s got to be Caesar’s wife. Above suspicion.”
“At least,” Philip said scornfully, “you have too much journalistic sense to print wild guesses like that. That’s something. But remember what I said about the men.”
“So?”
“So they might decide to clean out the Sentinel some night.”
MacVeagh’s hand clenched into a tight fist. Then slowly he forced it to relax. “Phil,” he said, “I ought to batter that pallor of yours to a nice, healthy pulp. But you’re not worth it. Tell the company police I’m saving my fists for their vigilante raid. Now get out of here, while I’ve still got sense enough to hold myself back.”
Philip was smiling confidently as he left, but his face was a trifle paler even than usual.
MacVeagh expressed himself with calculated liberty on Philip Rogers’ ancestry, nature, and hobbies for almost a minute before he was aware of Molly. “Sorry,” he broke off to say, “but I meant it.”
“Say it again for me, boss. And in spades.”
“I should have socked him. He—” MacVeagh frowned. “When I came in, it looked as though someone might already have had that pious notion.” He looked at Molly queerly. “Did you—”
“He made a pass at me,” Molly said unemotionally. “He thought maybe he could enlist me on their side that way, keep me from writing my stuff up. I didn’t mind the pass. Why I slapped him was, he seemed to think I ought to be flattered.”
MacVeagh laughed. “Good girl.” He sat down at the other typewriter and rolled in a sheet of copy paper. “We’ll hold the fort.” He began to type.
Molly looked up from her own copy. “Get any new leads, boss?”
“No,” he said reflectively. “This is just an experiment.” He wrote:
A sudden freakish windstorm hit Grover last night. For ten minutes windows rattled furiously, and old citizens began to recall the Great Wind of ’97.
The storm died down as suddenly as it came, however. No damage was done except to the statue of General Wigginsby in Courthouse Square, which was blown from its pedestal, breaking off the head and one arm.
C. B. Tooly, chairman of the Grover Scrap Drive, expressed great pleasure at the accident. Members of the Civic Planning Commission were reportedly even more pleased at the removal of Grover’s outstanding eyesore.
He tore the sheet out of the typewriter. Then a perversely puckish thought struck him and he inserted another page. He headed it:
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
Coroner Jake Willis has apparently abandoned his thirty-year standing of strict atheism. “In times like these,” he said last night, “we need faith in something outside of ourselves. I’ve been a stubborn fool for too long.”
Molly spoke as he stopped typing. “What kind of experiment, boss?”
“Let you know Friday,” he said. “Hold on tight, Molly. If this experiment works—”
For a moment he leaned back in his chair, his eyes aglow with visions of fabulous possibilities. Then he laughed out loud and got on with his work.
III.
No paper was ever gotten out by a more distracted editor than that Friday’s issue of the Grover Sentinel.
Two things preoccupied John MacVeagh. One, of course, was his purely rational experiment in scientific methods as applied to miracles. Not that he believed for an instant that whatever gestures Whalen Smith had woven in the air could impart to the Sentinel the absolute and literal faculty of printing the truth—and making it the truth by printing it. But the episode of the seventeen-year-old corpse had been a curious one. It deserved checking—rationally and scientifically, you understand.
And the other distraction was the effect upon Grover of the murder.
Almost, John MacVeagh was becoming persuaded that his crusading truthfulness had been a mistake. Perhaps there was some justice in the attitude of the bluenoses who decry sensational publishing. Certainly the town’s reaction to the sensational news was not healthy.
On the one hand, inevitably, there was the group—vocally headed by Banker Manson—who claimed that what they called the “smear campaign” was a vile conspiracy between MacVeagh and labor leader Tim Bricker.
That was to be expected. With Manson and his crowd, you pushed certain buttons and you got certain automatic responses. But MacVeagh had not foreseen the reverse of the coin he had minted: the bitterness and resentment among the little people.
“Whatddaya expect?” he overheard in Clem’s barber shop. “You take a guy like Hitchcock, you don’t think they can do anything to him, do you? Why, them guys can get away with—” The speaker stopped, as though that were a little more than he had meant to say.
But there were other voices to take up his accusation.
�
�Go ahead, Joe, say it. Get away with murder.”
“Sure, who’s gonna try to pin a rap on the guy that owns the town?”
“What good’s a police chief when he’s all sewed up pretty in Hitchcock’s pocket?”
“And the Sentinel don’t dare print half it knows. You all know the editor’s got a yen for Hitchcock’s daughter. Well—”
“Somebody ought to do something.”
That last was the crystallized essence of their feeling. Somebody ought to do something. And those simple words can be meaningful and ugly. They were on many tongues in Germany in the twenties.
John MacVeagh thought about the sorcerer’s apprentice, who summoned the powers beyond his control. But, no, that was a pointed but still light and amusing story. This was becoming grim. If he and Molly could only crack this murder, cut through to the solution and dispel once and for all these dissatisfied grumblings—
But how was that to be done? They had so few facts, and nothing to disprove the fantastic notion of a wandering tramp invading the upper story of a fully occupied house without disturbing a soul save his victim. If some trick of psychological pressure could force a confession—
MacVeagh mused on these problems as he walked back to the office after dinner on Thursday, and came regretfully to the conclusion that there was nothing to do but go on as per schedule: print Friday’s regular edition with what follow-up was possible on the murder story, and dig and delve as best they could to reach toward the truth.
He frowned as he entered the office. Sidewalk loafers weren’t so common on Spruce Street. They hung out more on South, or down near the station on Jackson. But this evening there was quite a flock of them within a few doors of the Sentinel.
Lucretius Sellers was chuckling over the copy he was setting up. “That sure is a good one you’ve got here on Jake, Johnny. Lord, I never did think I’d see the day— Maybe pretty soon we’ll see that ascetic atheist taking a drink, too. Which reminds me—”
The Compleat Werewolf Page 19