After Mr. Bentley had left, Mr. Dobson expressed something more of his doubts to Ted.
“I wish this thing could blow over as simply as Mr. Bentley would like to believe, but I’m afraid there are going to be repercussions. For one thing, there’s Mr. Woodring’s car—it’s a company car, and ought to be reported stolen. If it turns up without being reported, there will be some questions from the police. Then there are the checks Mr. Woodring is holding. Some of these are probably company checks, and he may forge the endorsements. And he may have made other contracts and commitments, all in the company’s name, that will be difficult to fulfill. I’m very much afraid the full extent of his wrongdoing hasn’t yet been uncovered.”
“Will this leave the Town Crier in the clear?” asked Ted.
“Not so clear as I should like it, Ted, since we helped sponsor the stamp plan in the first place. But if Mr. Bentley thinks I will give him any help at all in covering up matters from here on, he’s very much mistaken. And I may say a few things he won’t like at all, such as emphasizing the 2 per cent aspect of the deal and explaining the background of the plan. Some of these stamp companies would like to make people believe they really are getting something for nothing, but it isn’t quite like that. I intend to go into the subject pretty thoroughly, including some comments from people on both sides of the matter.”
As Ted left the office he had rather a letdown feeling. He was now unemployed, and although he might enjoy his two weeks of freedom, still he had the feeling that things were going on in which he had no part. He no longer worked for Blue Harvest. Whatever was going to be done about the matter was out of his hands. He explained all this to Nelson that evening.
“Well, we’ve still got Farmer Smith’s purple cow, Ted. Why don’t we take a ride out and see just what the gimmick is?”
CHAPTER 12
MR. SMITH’S COW
The farmer was busy with chores at the moment they arrived, and Mrs. Smith suggested that they wait for him out by the pasture fence.
“Then he really does have a purple cow?” asked Ted with a skeptical smile.
She smiled in return. “I guess it’s mostly in how you look at things. It’s his story, so I’d better not spoil it for him.”
They waited at the place indicated, and some fifteen minutes later Mr. Smith came sauntering up to them.
“Come out to see my purple cow, did you, boys?” he asked cheerfully. “Well, that won’t take long. There she is, yonder in the pasture. What do you think?”
Turning in the direction indicated, they saw a lone cow munching grass on a hillside. She had been there all along, but they had given her no attention, for there certainly was nothing at all remarkable about her coloring. It was an ordinary white cow, with some dark markings.
“Is that all?” asked Ted in disappointment, having somehow hoped for more than this.
“It looks like just a white cow to me,” said Nelson firmly.
“Well, now, let’s not be too hasty about this,” the farmer suggested. “You say it’s white. But this is daytime, you know, even if it is getting on toward sunset. Suppose it was pitch black outside, then what color would the cow be?”
“It’d still be white,” replied Nelson with conviction. “A white cow is a white cow, day or night.”
But Ted was beginning to catch the farmer’s drift and was picking up interest. “I suppose if the night were dark enough, the cow would be black, and we wouldn’t be able to see it at all.”
The farmer nodded in agreement. “That’s right. Now suppose it were night, but there was just a little light, so that you could see the cow. Then what color would the cow be?”
“I suppose it would be white,” said Ted, a little doubtfully.
“Yes, you’d call it white, but that’s because you knew it was white. If you didn’t know that, you might not be sure of its color at all. And even if you said it is white, would it be the same white that you’d see in the daytime?”
“No,” Nelson returned, “because there wouldn’t be enough light to see it by.”
“That’s quite correct. So then you’d have to admit that my cow does change color sometime during the day. Maybe I could make it clearer by talking about a red book. In the daylight it looks bright red. In the dark it looks simply black. Then the book must have changed color, from red to black, at some time or other. Now when did it change—all in a moment? No, it changed gradually, as the light was changing. And we all know when the light changes the most—at twilight. Look at my cow again—look carefully—and tell me what color you really think she looks like.”
Once more they studied the cow carefully. It was a very strange thing, because they knew that the cow was white. But the sun was now close to the horizon, shadows were lengthening, and the light was gradually fading from the sky. And the cow did look a little different. The color was no longer the bright white they would have seen during the day. Was there—could there be—just a shade of purple in the cow’s tint?
“Holy mackerel!” exclaimed Nelson. “Call me crazy if you want to, but I’m beginning to think that cow’s purple!”
“That’s right,” the farmer agreed. “We’re so used to seeing things the way we know them to be that very often we fail to see how they really look. I don’t think there’s anything so strange about a purple cow, after all, if you consider the way a cow and everything else change color at twilight. The trouble is, most of the time it takes an artist to point these things out to us. And then, just as likely as not, people will say the artist is crazy, and go right on calling the cow white, when it actually looks purple.”
“But the cow really is white,” Nelson observed. “You’ve got to admit that.”
“No, I don’t think I’m prepared to admit that,” said the farmer cautiously. “Let’s say the cow is white in the daytime, purple at twilight, and black at night. Why should we say that the daytime color is any more real than the twilight color, or the nighttime color?”
This was an interesting viewpoint, even though they weren’t quite prepared to accept the underlying philosophy. After all, Gelett Burgess claimed that he had never seen a purple cow, and millions of other people all agreed with him, didn’t they?
As Ted turned away, some of his disappointment returned to him. This had been an interesting experiment, but something rather less than he had expected. It appeared to have nothing at all to do with the matter of the purple-cow stamps which had been weighing so heavily on his mind.
He began to thank the farmer, preparatory to taking their leave, but Mr. Smith interrupted him.
“Oh, I’m not finished yet, Ted. I did have a particular reason for asking you to come out. I’ve got something to show you, but I don’t know whether you would have believed it, if you hadn’t seen my cow in the pasture first. Come on up to the house for a few minutes.”
They followed the farmer up the path and into the house, where he led them into the living room and switched on a light.
“There.” He motioned toward the opposite wall. “I told you I had a purple cow, and this one’s purple all the time.”
“A cow in the house?” Nelson muttered to himself, before realizing that the farmer was referring to a painting on the wall.
It was a very attractive painting, they quickly realized. It was a pastoral scene, with a cow strolling past a fence on a country lane. Most startling was the fact, if a person stopped to think about it, that the cow was a vivid purple. But taken in the setting of the picture, the cow did not look strange at all. The viewer assumed that the scene occurred at twilight and that the coloring of the cow was perfectly appropriate under the circumstances.
“Boy, Gelett Burgess should have seen this,” Nelson exclaimed. “What’s the name of the picture?”
“Oh, it has some very formal name—A Study at Twilight, or something like that. But nobody ever calls it by that name. It’
s popularly called The Purple Cow.”
“Isn’t that a valuable painting?” Ted inquired.
“It would be,” said the farmer regretfully, “if it were an original. Unfortunately, it’s only a copy. But it’s a good copy—hand drawn. There are only a few of them, and lots of people come out to see my painting. The original, by Jan Fountaine, hangs in a museum. They’ve got some rather strict rules about photographing it, and things like that. I had a fellow come out here only a few months ago, to ask me to allow him to take a picture of this.”
“Did you?” asked Nelson.
“Sure. Why not? If he’s breaking the copyright laws, or anything like that, it’s his lookout, not mine. Well, Ted, what do you think of my purple cow?”
“It’s a very nice picture, I guess, but... Say, wait a minute!” Ted was growing excited once more. “This picture is beginning to look awfully familiar.”
“Is it?” Mr. Smith chuckled. “I was wondering how long it would take you to catch on.”
“Catch on to what?” Nelson demanded. “I don’t see anything the matter with it.”
“Don’t you?” asked Ted, almost elatedly. “Look at the way that tree overhangs, and the barn, and the hills in the background.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute. Now I’m beginning to get it. Hey, could this be the same picture that’s on those Blue Harvest stamps?”
“Guess it is,” the farmer admitted, grinning broadly. “I thought Ted would be interested in that.”
“I sure am,” Ted agreed. He studied the picture once more. The similarity was apparent once you stopped to think about it, but it wasn’t so clear at first glance. There were matters of size and brush stroking. Then the picture had been somewhat trimmed around the edges for purposes of fitting it on the stamp without reducing the size excessively. And there was color, for while the painting consisted of many brilliant hues, all, these had been reduced to just one color on the stamps, a blue—or purple.
“What about this fellow who took the picture—the picture of the painting?” Ted questioned. “What did he look like?”
“I don’t exactly remember.” The farmer looked vague. “You see, I get quite a number of visitors to see my painting. And I was pretty busy at the time, too. I remember, I’d just had a telephone call that the milk truck had broken down and—”
“Can’t you remember anything about him?” Ted pressed him.
“Well, let me see, I think he was just an ordinary-looking fellow. I remember he wore a raincoat and hat, because it had been raining pretty heavily that day. I guess he was about thirty, average height, well built. And his hair was black—I think. Oh, one more thing. I remember he was left-handed, because he gave me a few dollars for letting him take the picture, and I recall he reached into his left-hand pocket for it.”
“Oh.” The description was certainly vague enough, and could fit thousands of men. “I was wishing he’d given you his name.”
“Oh, but he did give me his name! It was Winthrop—Mr. Winthrop. Yes, I remember that now, because my second cousin’s daughter married a man—”
“Well, I guess that’s that.” Ted’s voice sounded very dejected. “Thanks very much, Mr. Smith. It was worth the trip out here to see your painting.”
“That’s what they all tell me,” said Mr. Smith, pleased. He offered them refreshments as they passed by the kitchen door, but they declined with thanks, and calling a good-by to him and his wife, they set out for home.
“What’s with the name Winthrop, Ted?” asked Nelson, turning the car into the highway. “You acted like you recognized it. It was just a phony, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, and not even a very good phony. That’s Mr. Woodring’s first name—Winthrop Woodring. The description fits him, too. Well, that just goes to prove that he had this whole thing planned out months ago.”
“You knew that already, didn’t you? He couldn’t have printed those fake stamps overnight.”
“I know, but I guess I just didn’t want to admit it. This is not the case of a man suddenly going wrong. It was a long, carefully thought-out plan. And not a very good plan, either, since he wouldn’t be able to dispose of very many of his fake stamps.”
“How do you know that, Ted? He wouldn’t necessarily have had to dispose of his stamps to stores, would he? Could he have sold them to individuals, say at half price, so they could turn them in for the premiums?”
“That’s right, he could. But he’d have to sell them to the stores, too, I’d think. Say the stores all had genuine stamps, and certain individuals had fake stamps, this would point suspicion directly at them, and they’d have to tell where they got the stamps. But as long as the stores had fake stamps, too, then people could always claim they got them from the stores.”
“So that’s why he had to become a salesman for Blue Harvest,” Nelson observed.
“I guess so. Well, I wish I knew where to put my hands on Mr. Woodring right now.”
“Why, what good would it do?”
“I don’t know exactly, but he sort of took us all in—Mr. Dobson, me, the whole town—and I don’t like to see things end that way.”
“Well, that’s out of your hands. If the police can’t find him, I don’t think you can, either.”
“That’s just it. I doubt very much that Mr. Bentley intends to notify the police. He’d just like to say good riddance to Mr. Woodring once and for all. There’s probably nothing he can do to get back the money Mr. Woodring stole, anyway.”
“The Blue Harvest company will have to make good on those fake stamps, won’t they? And how can they tell how many Mr. Woodring put into circulation?”
“They can’t—but I guess they feel it doesn’t matter very much. It couldn’t be too many, and they’ll have to make good no matter how many there are, so that people won’t lose confidence in the stamps.”
“What does Mr. Dobson think?”
“I guess he thinks the police ought to be notified. He doesn’t believe you can get rid of Mr. Woodring and his work that easily. There’s the stolen car, for instance—a company car. That’s likely to turn up somewhere. Mr. Woodring wouldn’t dare travel very far in a car the police were looking for.”
“But the police aren’t looking for it”
“Sure, but he doesn’t know that. Oh, we’ve all been took—royally, and I’m beginning to get kind of burned about it. He had such a quiet, friendly air.”
“Just like all confidence men,” Nelson pointed out. “Anyway, I don’t see how you could do anything about it. If he fooled Mr. Dobson, then all you could do was to follow Mr. Dobson’s lead.”
“Maybe, but if I’d only been a little more alert, maybe I would have known what he was up to. Yes, I’d like to meet Mr. Woodring again and give him a piece of my mind. After that he could go his own way, if Mr. Bentley doesn’t want to enter charges.”
“Didn’t he give you any hint of where he might go, Ted? Did he talk about his family, or anything like that? You were the only one who was at all well acquainted with him.”
“I don’t think he had any family, at least he didn’t mention any. There was one little thing, though. He said he had a cabin in the woods—a place he liked to go to spend his vacations.”
“Did he tell you where it was?”
“No, but I kind of thought it was somewhere up north. He made a vague gesture over his shoulder, and we were traveling south at the time. Oh, one more thing—he said it overlooked two waterfalls. That ought to be some help.”
“What’s a waterfall?” Nelson snorted. “You can take a storm sewer sticking out of a hillside and call that a waterfall if you want to. Anyway, I never heard of two waterfalls close together. Did you?”
“No, not that I know of. Oh, I suppose it isn’t any very big or very famous place. Maybe you’re right. It could simply be two little trickles coming out of a hill.”
“Maybe only one,” Nelson decided. “One waterfall could be above his cabin, and one below it, all on the same stream.”
“That’s right, I suppose it could. Well, then, there probably wouldn’t be anything very strange about that, and chances are we’ll never find the place. I don’t care very much, anyway. What’s the use of seeing Mr. Woodring again? He wouldn’t tell us anything, and I guess I wouldn’t get very much pleasure shooting off my mouth at him, anyway. That’s a pretty cheap kind of satisfaction, after all.”
Nelson yawned. “Then that’s the end of the purple cow?”
“I guess so—as far as I’m concerned. I’m just going to bed early tonight, and go to sleep and hope I don’t dream about purple cows. And then I’m going to enjoy myself for the rest of my vacation.”
“Alone?” asked Nelson wisely.
“Alone? Well, partly. And partly not. I just might decide to take a little whirl at finding Nancy’s lost town for her.”
“Sure.” Nelson grinned. “It’s a good thing she lost her town. It gives you a chance to pretend you’re doing something for her.”
“Oh, I don’t think I’d need to pretend anything,” Ted retorted.
CHAPTER 13
A LATE CALLER
There had been nothing in Tuesday’s Town Crier about the crisis concerning the Blue Harvest stamps. On the contrary, there was an editorial drawing attention to the plan and expressing the hope that it would act to stimulate local trade. The paper’s deadline was noon on Monday, and up to that time few facts were definitely known. It was not until Tuesday morning that Ted had told the editor of Mr. Woodring’s alleged disappearance. Nor would Mr. Dobson have cared to print anything about the matter until he had talked with Mr. Bentley.
But there could be few doubts concerning the facts now, and Ted knew that there would be an article of some sort in the paper’s next issue, on Friday morning. This would be a sad day for Mr. Dobson, and an uncomfortable one for all the merchants who had signed up for the plan. It wasn’t going to do the plan any good to advertise the fact that a swindler had been connected with it. But it was hopeless to expect Mr. Dobson to pull in his horns, and Ted knew that he would print the article, exactly as he had promised.
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