CHAPTER VII
CARMEL entered the office of theFree Press, after her encounter with Abner Fownes, in a temper which her most lenient friend could not describe as amiable. It was no small part of Carmel’s charm that she could be unamiable interestingly. Her tempers were not set pieces, like the Niagara Falls display at a fireworks celebration. They did not glow and pour and smoke until the spectators were tired of them and wanted to see something else. Rather they were like gorgeous aërial bombs which rent the remote clouds with a detonation and lighted the heavens with a multitude of colored stars. Sometimes her choicest tempers were like those progressive bombs which keep on detonating a half a dozen times and illuminating with different colored stars after each explosion. This particular temper was one of her best.
“From now on,” she said to nobody in particular, and not at all for the purpose of giving information, “this paper is going to be run for one single purpose. It’s going to do everything that pompous little fat man, with his ears growing out of his shoulders, doesn’t want it to. It’s going to hunt for things he doesn’t like. It is going to annoy and plague and prod him. If a paper like this can make a man likehim uncomfortable, he’ll never know another peaceful moment....”
Evan Pell looked up from his table—over the rims of his spectacles—and regarded her with interest.
“Indeed!” he said. “And what, if I may ask, has caused this—er—declaration of policy?”
“He looked at me,” Carmel said, “and he—he wiggled all his chins at me.”
Tubal thrust his head through the doorway. “What’d he do?” he demanded, belligerently. “If he done anythin’ a gent shouldn’t do to a lady I’ll jest ca’mly walk over there and twist three-four of them chins clean off’n him.”
“I wish you would.... I wish you would.... But you mustn’t.... He gave me orders. He told me I was to let him read every bit of copy which went into this paper. He said I must have his O. K. on everything I print.”
“Ah!” said Evan Pell. “And what did you rejoin?”
“I told him this was my paper, and so long as it was mine, I should do exactly what I wanted with it, and then I turned my back and walked away leaving him looking like a dressed-up mushroom—a fatuous mushroom.”
“A new variety,” said Pell.
“I—I’ll make his life miserable for sixty days anyhow.”
“If,” said Pell, “he permits you to continue for sixty days.”
“I’ll continue, not for sixty days, but for yearsand years and years—till I’m an old, gray-headed woman—just to spite him. I’ll make this paper pay! I’ll show him he can’t threaten me. I’ll——”
“Now, Lady,” said Tubal, “if I was you I’d set down and cool off. If you’re spoilin’ fer a fight you better go into it level-headed and not jest jump in flailin’ your arms like a Frenchy cook in a tantrum. Abner Fownes hain’t no infant to be spanked and put to bed. If you calc’late to go after his scalp, you better find out how you kin git a grip onto his hair.”
“And,” said Pell, “how you can prevent his—er—getting a grip on yours.”
“I don’t believe he’s as big a man as he thinks he is,” said Carmel.
“I have read somewhere—I do not recall the author at the moment—a word of advice which might apply to this situation. It is to the effect that one should never underestimate an antagonist.”
“Oh, I shan’t. I’ll cool down presently, and then I’ll be as cold-blooded and calculating as anybody. But right now I—I want to—stamp on his pudgy toes.”
The telephone interrupted and Evan Pell put the receiver to his ear. “... Yes, this is theFree Press.... Please repeat that.... In Boston last night?... Who saw him? Who is speaking?” Then his face assumed that blank, exasperated look which nothing can bring in such perfection as to have the receiver at the other end of the line hung up in one’s ear. He turned to Carmel.
“The person”—he waggled his thumb toward theinstrument—“who was on the wire says Sheriff Churchill was seen in Boston last night?”
“Alive?”
“Alive.”
“Who was it? Who saw him?”
“When I asked that—he hung up the receiver in my ear.”
“Do you suppose it is true?”
“Um!... Let us scrutinize the matter in the light of logic—which it is your custom to ridicule. First, we have an anonymous communication. Anonymity is always open to suspicion. Second, it is the newspaper which is informed—not the authorities. Third, it is the newspaper which has been showing a curiosity as to the sheriff’s whereabouts—er—contrary to the wishes of certain people....”
“Yes....”
“From these premises I would reason: first, that the anonymous informer wishes the fact to be made public; second, that he wishes this paper to believe it; third, that, if the paper does believe it, it will cease asking where the sheriff is and why; and fourth, that if this report is credited, there will be no search by anybody for acorpus delicti.”
“Acorpus delicti! And what might that be?”
Evan Pell sighed with that impatient tolerance which one exhibits toward children asking questions about the obvious.
“It has been suggested,” he said, “that Sheriff Churchill has been murdered. The first requisite in the establishment of the commission of a murderis the production of thecorpus delicti—the body of the victim. If the body cannot be produced, or its disposal established, there can be no conviction for the crime. In short, a murder requires the fact of a dead man, and until the law can be shown a veritable body it is compelled, I imagine, to presume the victim still alive. Here, you will perceive, the effort is to raise a presumption that Sheriff Churchill is not acorpus delicti.”
“Then you don’t believe it?”
“Do you?”
“I—I don’t know. Poor Mrs. Churchill! For her sake I hope it is true.”
“H’m!... If I were you, Miss Lee, I would not inform Mrs. Churchill of this—without substantiation.”
“You are right. Nor shall I print it in the paper. You believe some one is deliberately imposing upon us?”
“My mind,” said Evan Pell, “has been trained for years to seek the truth. I am an observer of facts, trained to separate the true from the false. That is the business of science and research. I think I have made plain my reasons for doubting the truth of this message.”
“So much so,” said Carmel, “that I agree with you.”
Evan smiled complacently. “I fancied you could not do otherwise,” he said. “Perhaps you will be further convinced if I tell you I am quite certain I recognized the voice which gave the message.”
“Are you sure? Who was it?”
“I am certain in my own mind, but I could not take my oath in a court of law.... I believe the voice was that of the little hunchback known locally as Peewee Bangs.”
“The proprietor of the Lakeside Hotel?”
Evan nodded.
“What is this Lakeside Hotel?” Carmel asked. “I’ve heard it mentioned, and somehow I’ve gotten the idea that it was—peculiar.”
Tubal interjected an answer before Evan Pell could speak. “It’s a good place for sich as you be to keep away from. Folks drives out there in automobiles from the big town twenty-thirty mile off, and has high jinks. Before prohibition come in folks said Peewee run a blind pig.”
“He seems very friendly with the local politicians.”
“Huh!” snorted Tubal.
“I don’t understand Gibeon,” Carmel said. “Of course I haven’t been here long enough to know it and to know the people, but there’s something about it which seems different from other little towns I’ve known. The people look the same and talk the same. There are the same churches and lodges and the reading club and its auxiliaries, and I suppose there is the woman’s club which is exclusive, and all that. But, somehow, those things, the normal life of the place, affect me as being all on the surface, with something secret going on underneath.... If there is anything hidden, it must be hidden from most of the people, too. The folks must be decent,honest, hardworking. Whatever it is, they don’t know.”
“What gives you such an idea?” Evan Pell asked, with interest.
“It’s a feeling—instinct, maybe. Possibly it’s because I’m trying to find something, and imagine it all. Maybe I’ve magnified little, inconsequential things.”
“What has all this to do with Abner Fownes?”
“Why—nothing. He seems to be a rather typical small-town magnate. He’s egotistical, bumptious, small-minded. He loves importance—and he’s rich. The professional politicians know him and his weaknesses and use him. He’s a figurehead—so far as actual things go, with a lot of petty power which he loves to exercise.... He’s a bubble, and, oh, how I’d love to prick him!”
Evan bowed to her with ironical deference. “Remarkable,” he said. “A clean-cut, searching analysis. Doubtless correct. You have been studying him cursorily for a matter of days, but you comprehend him to the innermost workings of his mind.... I, a trained observer, have watched and scrutinized Abner Fownes for a year—and have not yet reached a conclusion. May I compliment you, Miss Lee?”
Carmel’s eyes snapped. “You may,” she said, and then closed her lips determinedly.
“You were going to say?” Evan asked, in his most irritating, pedagogical tone.
“I was going to say that you have mighty little to be supercilious about. You don’t know any moreabout this man than I do, and you’ve been here a year. You don’t like him because he hurt your vanity, and you’re so crusted over with vanity that whatever is inside of it is quite lost to sight.... He had you discharged as superintendent of schools, and it rankles.... It’s childish, like that letter of yours.... Oh, you irritate me.”
“Er—at any rate you have the quality of making yourself clear,” he said, dryly, not offended, she was surprised to note, but rather amused and tolerant. He was so cocksure, so wrapped up in himself and his abilities, so egotistical, that no word of criticism could reach and wound him. Carmel wanted to wound him, to see him wince. She was sorry for him because she could perceive the smallness, the narrowness, the poverty of his life; yet, because she felt, somehow, that his character was of his own planning and constructing, and because it was so eminently satisfactory to her, that it was a duty to goad him into a realization of his deficiencies. Evan Pell did not seem to her a human being, a man, so much as a dry-as-dust mechanism—an irritating little pedant lacking in all moving emotions except boundless vanity.
She had taken him into the office, half from sympathy, half because somebody was needed and he was the only help available. At times she regretted it. Now she leaned forward to challenge him.
“You’ve boasted about your abilities as a trained investigator,” she said. “Very well, then, investigate. That’s the business of a reporter. Gibeon isyour laboratory. You’ll find it somewhat different to get at facts hidden in human brains than to discover the hidden properties of a chemical or to classify some rare plant or animal.... I haven’t a trained mind. I wasn’t an infant prodigy. I haven’t spent my lifetime in educating my brain out of all usefulness, but I can see there’s something wrong here. Now, Mr. Pell, take your trained faculties out and discover what it is. There’s investigation worth while.”
“Are you sure,” said Evan, “you will have the courage to publish what I find?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “There’s no use talking about that,” she said, “until you find something.”
“What,” he said, provocatively, “do you want me to investigate first?”
“The one thing that cries out for investigation. Find out why nothing is done to discover what happened to Sheriff Churchill. Find out why he disappeared and who made him disappear and what has become of him. Fetch me the answers to these questions and I’ll take back all I’ve said—and apologize.”
“Has it—er—occurred to you that perhaps Sheriff Churchill disappeared because he—investigated too much?”
“Are you afraid?” she asked.
He wrinkled his brows and peered at her through his spectacles, and then, nonplused her by answering, calmly, “I rather fancy I am. Yes, now I come to give consideration to my emotions, I find I am apprehensive.”
“Then,” she said, with a shrug, “we will forget about it.”
“You are trying,” he said, “to make me feel ashamed because I am afraid. It is useless. I shall not be ashamed. It is natural I should be afraid. Self-preservation dictates fear. The emotion of fear was implanted in man and animals as a—er—safety device to prevent them from incurring dangers. No, I am not in the least ashamed.... Fortunately, reason has been provided as well as fear, and, consequently, if reason counsels a course of action which fear would veto, it is only natural that intelligence should govern.... Reason should always control emotion. Therefore, apprehensive as I am of unpleasant consequences to myself, I shall proceed with the investigation as indicated.” His tone was final. There was no boasting in his statement, only the logical presentation of a fact. He was afraid, but his reason indicated to him that it was worth his while to subject himself to the hazards of the situation. Therefore he subordinated fear.
But Carmel—responsibility sat upon her heavily in that moment. She had ordered or goaded a human being into risking his person, perhaps his life. That phase of it had not presented itself to her. She was sending a man into danger, and the responsibility of her doing so arose stark before her.
“I—I have no right,” she said, hesitatingly. “I was wrong. I cannot allow you to put yourself in danger.”
“Unfortunately,” said Evan Pell, “you have novote in the matter. I have made the decision.... Of course, you may dispense with my services, but that will not affect my conduct. I shall find out what became of Sheriff Churchill and put myself in a position to lay before the proper authorities substantiated facts covering all phases of his disappearance.”
“But——”
He raised his hand, palm toward her. “My decision is final,” he said, with asperity.