The False Gods Part 6

There they were halted, for Simpkins had left his key sticking in the spring lock inside and slammed the door behind him, a piece of carelessness over which the officers were greatly exercised; for he had not confided to them that he had started off in a hurry. In the end, they sent the door crashing in with their shoulders and preceded Simpkins--and he was scrupulously polite about this--into the ante-chamber.

There an incandescent lamp over the youth's desk gave them light and Simpkins momentary relief. The men used hard language when they found the second door in the same condition as the first, but Simpkins took their rating meekly. They tried their shoulders again, but the oak was stout and long withstood their a.s.saults. When at last it yielded it gave way suddenly, and they all tumbled pell-mell into the hall. Simpkins jumped up with incredible agility, and was back in the lighted ante-chamber before the others had struggled to their feet. Suddenly they stopped swearing. They looked around them. Then they, too, stepped back into the ante-chamber.

"Ain't there any way of lighting this place?" asked one of them rather sullenly.

"Nothing but three incandescents over the desks," answered Simpkins.

"Use your lantern then, Tom; come on now, young feller, and show us where this woman is," he said roughly, and he pushed Simpkins through the door.

As the officers followed him, he fell back between them and linked his arms through theirs. And silently they advanced on the altar, a grotesque and rather unsteady trio, the bull's eyes on either side flashing ahead into the darkness.

"The lamp's still burning," whispered Simpkins. They were far enough into the hall now to see the glow from it in the corner. "Flash your lights around those pillars, boys. There, over there!"

The bull's eyes jumped about searching her out. "There! now! Hold still!" cried Simpkins as they focused on the chair.

The black mummy lay as he had left it, the cloth still on the face, but the chair was empty. Straight to the veil the reporter ran, and pulled the cord. Light broke from above, and beat down on an altar heaped with dying roses and the statue of a woman, smiling. And at her feet there crouched a great black cat, that arched its back and snarled at Simpkins.

Beyond, the lights were still burning in Mrs. Athelstone's apartment, but there was no one in the rooms. Some opened drawers in the bureau and the absence of her toilet articles from the table told of preparations for a hasty flight.

They did not linger long over their examination of the rooms. But after replacing the broken doors as best they could and sealing them, they went out by the main entrance to question the watchman, whom they found dozing in his chair.

Had he seen anything of Mrs. Athelstone? Sure; he'd called a cab for her about an hour ago and she'd driven off with her brother.

"Her brother!" echoed Simpkins.

"Yep," yawned the watchman; "you know him--parson--Doctor Brander.

What's up?"

"Nothing," Simpkins returned sourly, but to himself he added, "Oh, h.e.l.l!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

X

Once in the street again, after a word of explanation to the watchman, the officers and Simpkins separated, they to report and send out an alarm for Mrs. Athelstone and Brander, he to call up his office before rejoining them. His exultation over his beat was keyed somewhat lower, now that he understood what Brander's real interest in Mrs. Athelstone was. Mentally, he wrung the neck of b.u.t.tons for not having known it; figuratively, he kicked himself for not having guessed it; literally, he d.a.m.ned his employers for their British reserve, their cool a.s.sumption that because he was their clerk he was not interested in their family affairs. "Cuss 'em for sn.o.bs," he wound up finally, a deep sense of his personal grievance stirring his sociable Yankee soul.

Of course, this sickening brother and sister business wouldn't touch the main fact of the story, but it knocked the "love motive" and the "heart interest" higher than a kite, utterly ruining some of his prettiest bits of writing, besides letting him in for a call-down from Naylor. Still, the old man couldn't be very hard on him--he'd understand that some trifling little inaccuracies were bound to creep into a great big story like this, dug out and worked up by one man.

At this more cheerful conclusion, a newsboy, crying his bundle of still damp papers, came along, and Simpkins hailed him eagerly. Standing under a lamp on the corner, skipping from front page to back, then from head to head inside, with an eye skilled to catch at a glance the stories which a loathed contemporary had that the _Banner_ had missed, he ran through the bunch. The _Sun_--not a line about Athelstone in it. Bully! The _American_--he was a little afraid of the _American_.

Safe again. The _World_--Sam Blythe's humorous descriptive story of the convention led. He stopped to pity Sam and the New York papers, as he thought of the Boston newsboys, crying his magnificent beat, till all Washington Street rang with the glory of it. And he could see the fellows in Mrs. Atkinson's, letting their coffee grow cold as they devoured the _Banner_, stopping only here and there to call across to each other: "Good work, Simp., old boy! Great story!"

Then--Simpkins turned the page. Accident--ten killed--bank robbed--caught--Mrs. Jones gets divorce.... What!

NOTED SCIENTIST SECURES IMPORTANT RIGHTS DOCTOR ATHELSTONE ARRANGES FOR ROYAL SOCIETY TO EXPLOIT RECENT DISCOVERIES

Simpkins stuttered around for an exclamation; then looked up weakly.

Instinct started him on the run for the nearest long-distance telephone, but before he had gone twenty feet he stopped. The paper was long since off press and distributed. He had no desire to know what Naylor was saying. He could not even guess. There are heights to which the imagination cannot aspire.

Then came a faint ray of hope. That was an a.s.sociated Press dispatch--a late one probably. But if it had reached the New York papers in time to catch the edition, Naylor must have received it soon enough to kill his story. But even as this hope came it went. The news interest of the dispatch was largely local. Doubtless it had been sent out only to the New York papers.

Simpkins forced himself to read the body of the message now, although he gagged over every line of it:

London, etc. Dr. Alfred W.R. Athelstone, well known in London as the president of the American branch of the Royal Society of Egyptian Exploration and Research, arrived here this morning and is stopping at the Carlton. He announces that the Khedive has been graciously pleased to grant to his society the sole right to excavate the tombs recently discovered by one of its agents in the Karnak region. Doctor Athelstone left home quietly some weeks ago, and held back any announcement of the discoveries, which promise to be very important, while the negotiations, now brought to a happy conclusion, were pending. He sails for New York on the Campania tomorrow.

"Do I go off half-c.o.c.ked? Am I yellow? Is a pup yellow?" groaned Simpkins, and he started off aimlessly toward the park, fighting his Waterloo over again and counting up his losses. That foolish, foolish letter! Why had he soiled his fingers by opening it! Of course, that line which loomed so large and fine in his story, that pointed the impressive finger of Fate at Crime, "_That thing that I have to do is about done!_" referred to Doctor Athelstone's silly negotiations. The letter must have been from him. Now, who could have known that a grown man would indulge in such fool monkey-business as writing love-letters in hieroglyphics to his own wife?... And that blame black mummy. Back to darkest Africa for his! If any one ever said mummy to him there'd be murder done, all right. Oh, for the happy ignorance of those days when he knew nothing about Egypt except that it was the place from which the cigarettes came!... Brander, no doubt, had gone out to send a cablegram of congratulation to Doctor Athelstone, and while he was away the woman had started in to repair a crack in that precious old Amosis of hers.

Perhaps the moths had got into him! "And she thought that I was crazy, and was stringing me along, waiting till the Nile Duck got back,"

muttered the reporter, stopping short in his agony. "Oh! you're guessing good now, Simp., all right, because there's only one way to guess." And as he started along again he concluded: "d.a.m.n it! even the cat came back!"

If there was one thing in all the world that Simpkins did not want to see it was a copy of the _Banner_ with that awful story of his staring out at him from the first page, headed and played up with all the brutal skill in handling type of which Naylor was a master; but he felt himself drawn irresistibly to the Grand Central Station, where the Boston papers would first be put on sale.

Half an hour to wait. Gad! He could never go back and face Naylor!...

Libel! Why, there wasn't money enough in the world to pay the damages the Athelstones would get against the paper. He'd take just one look at it and then catch the first train for Chicago. Perhaps he could get a job there digging sewers, or selling ribbons in Fields', or start a school of journalism. Any old thing, if they didn't nab him and put him in Bloomingdale before he could get away.... He made for the street again. He wouldn't look at the _Banner_. What malignant little devils the types were when they shouted your sins, not another fellow's, from the front page, or whispered them in a stage aside from some little paragraph in an obscure corner of the paper--a corner that the whole world looked into. h.e.l.l, he'd get out of the filthy business! Think of the light and frolicsome way in which he'd written up domestic scandals, the entertaining specials he'd turned out on unfaithful husbands, the snappy columns on unhappy wives, careless of the cost of his sensation in blood and tears! And now they'd write him up--Naylor would attend to that editorial himself, and do it in his most virtuous style--and brand him as a fakir, a liar, and a yellow dog.

Simpkins was back at the news-stand again and there were the Boston papers. He s.n.a.t.c.hed a _Banner_ from the top of the pile. No, he must have the wrong paper. He tore through it from front to back and then to front again, his heart bounding with joy. There was not a line of his story in it. They had received that a.s.sociated Press dispatch, after all. Yes, there it was, but oh, how differently it looked! It spelt d.a.m.nation an hour ago, it meant salvation now.

After all, hadn't his mistake been a natural one? Hadn't he done his best for the paper? Wasn't it his duty to run down a lead like that?

He'd made errors of judgment, perhaps, but he'd like to see the man who wouldn't have under the circ.u.mstances. Of course, mistakes would creep in occasionally and give innocent people the worst of it, but look at the good he'd done in his life by exposing scoundrels. How could he, how could any man, have acted differently who was loyal to his paper, whose first interests were the public good? If Naylor didn't appreciate a star man when he had him, he thought he knew an editor or two who did. Simp., old boy, wasn't going to starve.... Starve? It had been hungry work, so he'd just step across to the Manhattan, get a bite of breakfast, and look up the trains to Boston.

Naylor did know a good man when he had him, and likewise--quite as valuable a bit of knowledge--he knew when a man had had enough. So when Simpkins sat down that afternoon to tell him his experiences, he only smiled quizzically as the reporter wound up by asking, "Now, what do _you_ think?" and answered:

"Well, for one thing, I think it did you a power of good to look behind that veil, because I reckon that for once in your life you've told me the truth as near as you know how."

"No, but aside from this pleasant personal conclusion," persisted Simpkins, modestly shedding the compliment.

"Well, I guess we won't bother with the Blavatsky story just now, but here's a clipping about a woman who's discovered what she calls soul aura--says we've got red, white and blue souls and all that sort of stuff. You're our soul expert now, so go over to the City Hall and ask the mayor and any politicians you meet what's the color of their souls.

It ought to make a fair Sunday special." And Naylor swung around to his desk, for the city editor had just told him that the headless trunk of a woman had been picked up in the river--a find that promised a good story--and a newspaper man cannot waste time on yesterday.

Simpkins' face fell. That he had not been a.s.signed to find the head was, he knew, the beginning of his punishment. But as he walked down the dingy hall to the street his step became more buoyant, and once in the open air he started off eager and smiling. For a good opening sentence was already shaping in his head, and as he stepped into the City Hall he was repeating to himself:

"Yesterday, when the Mayor was asked, 'What is the color of your soul?'

he returned his stereotyped 'Nothing to give out on that subject,' and then added, 'But it would be violating no confidence to tell you that Boss c.o.o.nahan's is black.'"

To Simpkins it had been given to lift the veil and to know the truth; yet he was back again serving the false G.o.ds.