Death Points A Finger Part 19

The growling voice at the other end of the wire identified itself as that of Hite, of the New York Eagle. McCall profanely told the voice that he would get Jimmy, when Hite stopped him.

"Never mind Jimmy, you'll do. I was at a night club when I got word that you sent out word to guard Flynn. Is that right?"

"Yes. Is that what you woke me up for. Can't a newspaper respect another man's--"

"Aw, boloney, save that for the jury. I called you up to tell you that I did something for you. A souse got in a fight with Flynn on the train. The cop and the trooper staved off trouble. I got in touch with someone up there and now there's two secret service men on the train with him. They got on the train at Brattleboro. Tell your friends and tell Jimmy. Good night."

When McCall turned away from the telephone, Jimmy was standing there watching him. When he heard what the District Attorney, with considerable heat, had to say, Jimmy grinned.

"Save it, Mac, save it. You ought to thank the old grouch for calling you up. He put two secret service men on the train with Flynn? Just like Hite. You'll have to admit that it takes a newspaper man to do things."

McCall glared at him. Jimmy returned the glare with his most impudent grin, and they returned to their beds.

Chapter XII

Sunday, the next day, gave Jimmy a chance to rest. He supplied himself with as many papers as he could get in Lentone and began reading what others had to say about the most sensational murder case in a decade. From the first moment when Professor Brierly had p.r.o.nounced the Miller death a murder the affair had a.s.sumed national importance.

Following the clues supplied by the members of the Tontine group a number of the papers and the important press services had followed the dim traces of one Amos Brown, the last surviving member of the batch of prisoners who had been numbered '14' in Libby Prison far back in 1864.

One of the papers told in vivid detail of the disbanding of the army of the North by President Johnson on a.s.suming office after Lincoln's a.s.sa.s.sination. This told of the day when two hundred thousand in weather worn uniforms, with tattered flags and polished guns trudged in review before the President.

It pictured several members of the Tontine group, youngsters of seventeen or eighteen, forming part of the audience that saw this army go by. It depicted a few of the Union members of the Tontine group in that marching horde. The story told in vivid detail of the attempts of the Confederate veterans to go back home to the quiet and industrious productive life which now that peace was at hand, they yearned most for.

The papers gave a brief history of each member of the dwindling Tontine group. They showed how the two hundred and thirty-seven adversaries in the war had lived in amity and peace during the span of years in the true spirit of comradeship.

The papers spoke of the enormous size of the fund, which in the sixty-five years had, because of compound interest, grown with geometric leaps. One of the special writers had elicited from Mr.

Marshall, former Amba.s.sador to Great Britain, the information that for nearly a decade the surviving members had reached a compromise by which each survivor was to get annually an amount sufficient for a livelihood. This amount was not divulged. This reporter did learn, however, that this was done at the suggestion of one of the wealthiest members of the group. Jimmy suspected that this member was August Schurman.

It was explained that the purpose of this was to save from actual want those members who were not as fortunate financially as their comrades. This method of dividing a small part of the fund, without impairing seriously the capital amount, would preserve the self-respect of the poorer members.

One of the papers dug up an interesting story about Stanislav Vasiliewski, who was a Confederate soldier and had a brother in the Union army. Stanislav's brother had been captured and held in Jackson, Mississippi, where a rickety old enclosed bridge, the ruins of which had been left standing above the water, was used as a prison. The prisoners were kept in this structure for one month in the coldest season of the year without beds or bedding. At this prison there was no fire or lights. Almost every day two or three were carried out dead; some of them frequently lay at the entrance to the bridge unburied four or five days.

Stanislav found his brother a prisoner in this place. It appeared certain to him that his brother would not survive the terrible conditions more than a few days longer. He thereupon changed uniforms with his brother and forced the latter to leave the prison, himself remaining with the probability of facing a firing squad.

This paper mentioned Colonel Thomas C. Fletcher, of Blair's Brigade, commander of the Missouri Wide Awake Zouaves, being wounded and captured by the Confederates and with twenty other men, privates and officers, being put into this prison.

Reporters, special writers, novelists spread themselves in this Sunday edition. They extracted from the situation all the thrill, glamour and romance they could. And permeating it all was the terrible threat of death that hung over the heads of the Tontine group; the mysterious "14," who for all these years had followed the group relentlessly with his terrible reminders.

And, strange to say, with the major newspapers and police of two countries making an exhaustive search, there was not one tangible clue leading to the murderer or murderers. The newspapers talked of "clues." The police of many communities talked of "clues." They issued statements to the effect that shortly there would be new developments. Jimmy, the veteran newspaperman, took this all for exactly what it was worth. He knew that most of it or all of it was "dope." The reporters had run out of facts and were having recourse to vague speculations. Strange too, Jimmy wondered that in a story so replete with color and glamour, that this should be the situation.

The story was less than three days old; that is a long time counted in editions. Many editions had gone to press. City, state and Federal police were actively on the job. And now, when Jimmy was reading the Sunday papers, nearly sixty hours had elapsed since the news of the first death had come to Justice Higginbotham's camp and the police had not a single shred of evidence linking the murders to any one.

Professor Brierly's name did not have a prominent part in any of the stories he had read. Jimmy knew why. Professor Brierly was averse to being quoted unless he had something definite to say. He never gave an opinion unless it was an opinion based on fact that one could "go to court with."

The first flaming headlines had featured Professor Brierly necessarily, since it was he who had pointed out the fact that two of the deaths were murders.

Jimmy, late that Sunday afternoon, went once more to the camp of Justice Higginbotham. The large, comfortable cottage, with its graceful furniture, its books, its meager, comfortable furnishings, was a house of death, dread and horror. Its inhabitants were afraid of one another. The opening of a door, any untoward noise, the ringing of the telephone, caused most of them to jump and look about apprehensively. In sheer bravado, they, one at a time, went out of the house either to walk about the rough ground, or to go to Lentone.

A visit to the police station there bore no fruit. Brasher was red-eyed, haggard and in a vicious humor. Boyle had closed up after his first talk with Brasher and he now refused to add anything to what he had already told him, or to retreat an inch from his position.

With Brasher's permission, Jimmy tried to interview him. Boyle was not now the suave, smooth, modern type crook. He had had ample time to realize fully the dangerous position he was in. He knew that this was not a case of an ordinary murder, or of the murder of one gangster by another. He knew that the nation was aroused over these murders, and that he would stand very little chance before a jury unless he could build up a stronger defense than he possessed, or find a more plausible alibi.

Boyle swore at Jimmy with an understandable wrath. He poured out his hopelessness and rage in obscenities that made even the hardened newspaper man wince. He cursed Jimmy, the police, Professor Brierly, McCall, everything and everybody to which he could lay tongue. Jimmy looked at him pityingly, understandingly, and left him, raging and cursing.

Jimmy decided to go home and bask in the camp's domestic quiet.

Tommy Van Orden, under his mother's adoring eyes, was trying, in imitation of his big Uncle Jack, to teach the puppy to wipe its paws.

The three men were on the porch. Professor Brierly, in an expansive mood, was enlarging on one of his favorite conversational topics.

"Education! Education has become a mere form. There was a time in this country, even in this country, when a boy or girl went to an inst.i.tution of higher learning for only one reason: to get an education. And now! Stadia and bowls instead of laboratories and cla.s.srooms. Physical perfection has become a fetish and that is being highly commercialized.

"When Einstein delivers an important p.r.o.nouncement, an announcement that is of universal importance, the papers facetiously give it a few paragraphs. But when a center receives the football and runs several hundred yards with it, the papers get hysterical--"

"A center, Professor? Several hundred yards?" murmured Matthews.

Professor Brierly glared at him. Matthews gently corrected him:

"A center wouldn't be permitted to receive a pa.s.s, or run several hundred yards or--"

"Well, the tacklers, then, or the guardsmen."

"Nor the tackles or guards, Professor," murmured Matthews.

"Keep quiet!" snapped Professor Brierly. "What difference does it make. The point I am making is that the ma.s.s is taught to pay too much attention to perfectly inconsequential things while they ignore or overlook the things of sound worth.

"You can get, at most, only a handful of persons to listen to a sound informative lecture, whereas seventy thousand persons will sit in a freezing rain to watch Cagle, of Southern California, or Grange, of Yale--"

Matthews again interrupted:

"Better not make it public, Professor, that Cagle played on the Trojans team, or Grange for old Eli. If it became known--"

"You are the saddest commentary of the truth of what I am saying,"

snarled the old scientist. "How can a person know the worthwhile things when he stores his mind with such trivial--you know far too much of such things, young man."

Martha came to the door and told Jimmy that he was wanted on the telephone. She also emphatically gave it as her opinion that a man who spoke as did the caller on the telephone was no gentleman.

With the utterance of his "h.e.l.lo," Hite's growl came over the wire.

"The way you act anyone would think that you were on a vacation.

Where the h.e.l.l were you? I've been trying to get you in all the places you should be if you're on the job. I was at the club and just got a flash that something big broke, something in connection with the Tontine group. I've been trying to get you. Where the h.e.l.l were you?"

"Just came from the police station a few minutes ago, chief. What is it?"

"How the h.e.l.l do I know what it is? Who's on the story, you or I?