  The Horace Chadwicks were breakfasting in their stately old colonial home in the environs of the city. The shrill song of twittering robins came through the half-open windows on a gentle spring breeze and the morning sunlight flooded the room. A benign spirit of peace and domestic tranquility seemed to brood over the scene. Mr. Chadwick, a solid and substantial looking man of fifty-five, was supping his coffee and glancing through the financial columns of the Gazette. Mrs. Chadwick had finished her grape-fruit and had just picked up the Bulletin. She was a matronly person whose ample bosom seemed to be but the continuation of a rippling series of superfluous chins. She carried herself, even in her morning negligee, with that air of conscious rectitude and commanding importance which she felt to be fitting for a prominent banker’s wife who was a member of three important women’s clubs, secretary of the anti-cigarette section of the local branch of the W. C. T. U., vice-president of the Baltimore chapter of the League Opposed to Woman’s Suffrage and chairman of the Advisory Committee to the State Board of Moving Picture Censors. If Mr. Chadwick hadn’t been deeply immersed in the Gazette’s account of the proposed merger of certain copper interests he might have noticed gathering storm clouds a few feet away, but he was blissfully unconscious of any impending catastrophe. Screened by his paper he had no inkling of the passing train of emotions that were registered upon the extensive facial areas of the partner of his joys. Amazement, incredulity, bewilderment, chagrin, unholy rage—all of these feelings were depicted upon the countenance of Mrs. Chadwick and were succeeded in turn, by an expression of scornful calm that was pregnant with possibilities of a most unpleasant nature. She laid down the Bulletin, removed her glasses and addressed her husband in a voice that was cold and menacing. “What car do you propose using Sunday, Horace?” she asked. “What’s that?”, said Mr. Chadwick looking around his newspaper. “What car? Sunday? Oh, I guess I’ll take the new touring car out?” “Don’t you think the limousine would be better?”, she continued in an even voice. “More sheltered, more screened from the public gaze as it were?” “More screened from the public gaze?”, he repeated. “What are you getting at, Elizabeth? No limousine for me if this weather keeps up. Wonderful morning, my dear, a wonderful morning. I’ll bet the crocuses sprouted three inches over night. A few more days like this and I’ll peel a half dozen years off. Nothing like spring to put life into you, my dear, nothing like it.” “Nothing like spring to make foolish nincompoops out of a lot of old men,” corrected Mrs. Chadwick in a voice that was positively glacial. Something in the tone of it stirred her husband’s curiosity. He put down his paper and looked up quickly. “What are you talking about, Elizabeth?” he inquired sharply. “I suppose Colonel Roundtree has picked a blonde,” went on Mrs. Chadwick icily, utterly ignoring his question. “Have you decided on a brunette, Horace?” “Blondes—brunettes?” murmured Mr. Chadwick hazily. “Have I decided—say, Elizabeth, what’s got into you?” “I dare say brunettes are a little too seriously inclined for you,” ran on his wife in the same even, ironic tone. “Blondes are livelier and they have the funniest names, I’m told. Which do you prefer, Horace—Trixie, Mazie or Delphine?” Mr. Chadwick surveyed his wife with alarm. “What’s the joke, Elizabeth?”, he inquired with an attempt at a smile that was really pathetic. “Where do I laugh?” “Into her little pink ear, Horace,” responded Mrs. Chadwick. “Look here, Elizabeth,” he shouted, “either you need a doctor or the air around here needs clearing. Humor was never your strong forte. There are a lot of sly little innuendos floating about that I’m going to choke off right here and now. Some damned old meddler in petticoats has been buzzing about this house and I’m going to find out who it is.” Mrs. Chadwick composedly confronted him. “A pretty well known meddler, Horace,” she remarked with irritating suavity. “A meddler known to thousands. I refer you to the Bulletin.” She carelessly indicated the paper in front of her. Mr. Chadwick grabbed it and hurriedly glanced at the front page. A three column headline attracted his attention. By the time Mr. Chadwick got that far he was spluttering like a leaky radiator valve. By the time he had finished reading through the flossy little yarn that Billy Crandall had woven out of Jimmy Martin’s story, he looked as if he had overstayed the time limit in the hot room at a Turkish bath by fifteen minutes. His face was fiery red and the veins stood out on his forehead in knotty little lumps. The fragmentary remarks that Mrs. Chadwick was able to extract from the almost incoherent jumble of sounds that escaped from the lips of her spouse during the reading were of such a general nature and tone that she put her hands to her ears in sheer self-defense and sat wildly tapping her feet on the floor to drown them out. The next minute her husband crashed out of the room and through the hall to his waiting car. “Cut her loose, Martin, and drive me to the Bulletin office,” he shouted to the trim chauffeur. “I’m going over the top after that crowd of pestiferous puppies.” Though it was not quite nine o’clock when Horace Chadwick arrived at the Bulletin office he found eight other apoplectic prominent citizens gathered in excited colloquy in the ante-room to the office of Richard Chilvers, the owner and editor-in-chief of the paper. Col. Hannibal Roundtree, a handsome and stately old gentleman with a militant imperial and a flowing white moustache, was addressing remarks to a thoroughly scared young man who had thoughtlessly confessed a minute before that he was Mr. Chilver’s secretary. “You listen to me, young man,” he was saying. “You march into that office there and get Dick Chilvers on that private wire of his and tell him that if he’s a gentleman he’ll drop his breakfast and come down heah and meet a delegation of irate and fightin’ mad citizens of this community face to face, instead skulkin’ in the trenches.” The youthful secretary vanished through a swinging door marked “Private” and Colonel Roundtree turned to his friends. “Damned, rascally, cowardly hounds—that’s what I call ’em. They print a dastardly canard like that and then they skedaddle in the face of the common enemy.” “You’re talking, colonel,” broke in Mr. Chadwick. “I haven’t met anybody I know, but I’ll bet we’re the laughing stock of the whole town.” “I can’t take that bet,” responded Col. Roundtree bitterly. “Unfortunately for my peace of mind I have met some of my friends. Why, gentlemen, we should take matters into our own hands, mount a machine gun right heah at this door and keep ’em from gettin’ out another edition of this lyin’, treachous, no-account sheet.” There were murmurs of approval of these belligerent sentiments from the little group of protestants which had just been increased by the arrival of Jonathan Wilde, a thin dyspeptic looking man with a disappearing Adam’s apple and of Henry Quinby Blugsden, a former United States senator who carried the dignity of America’s foremost debating society about with him on all occasions. “Legal measures, my dear colonel,” said the former senator, “are, I think, the soundest in such an emergency. So far as I am concerned my suit will be filed this afternoon. I shall name the sum of $250,000 as insufficient damages for the mental pain I have already undergone. Mrs. Blugsden, as many of you know, is a woman of decided prejudices and a strong mind.” “She hasn’t a shade on my wife,” remarked Mr. Wilde. “She’s got two doctors working on her this minute. Went right off into hysterics at the breakfast table and began smashing china.” “My own deah Julia,” remarked the colonel, “professed not to believe the damned nonsense, but there was a look in her off eye as I was passin’ out the door that made me feel more uncomfortable than I have since the day Yellow Boy lost the Eastern Shore Handicap.” The elevator door out in the corridor clanged just then and the brisk step of Richard Chilvers was heard approaching the little delegation of prominent citizens. Colonel Roundtree moved to a strategic position at the head of the group. The publisher—a tall, forthright, hearty looking man—stopped at the doorway and affected great surprise at the combination of wealth, social position and business power he found confronting him. “Well, well,” he remarked buoyantly, “the Bulletin seems to be honored this morning. It can’t be possible that you’re all waiting to see me, is it?” Colonel Roundtree lost his voice for a moment at the breezy assurance of this greeting. He coughed violently and then composed himself with a mighty effort. “You know perfectly well why we’re here, Dick Chilvers,” he said majestically. “We’re here because the honor and the sacred dignity of our homes and hearths have been ruthlessly assailed in the public prints.” The publisher walked toward the door leading to his office. He held it open. “Just step inside, gentlemen,” he said quietly. “I never discuss business out here.” The prominent citizens moved inside and disposed themselves about the desk in the centre of the room. Mr. Chilvers, who was irritatingly calm, laid his hat and gloves on the desk and faced them. “Won’t you be seated, gentlemen?” he asked suavely. “Seated! Hell!” retorted Colonel Roundtree. “We want to talk to you standin’ up. Why did you print that lyin’ yarn this mornin’?” “I presume you refer to the story about the Automobile Club,” returned the publisher. “I’m not aware that it is a lying yarn, as you call it. I’ve been up several hours, colonel, and I’ve been doing a little investigating on my own.” There were excited murmurs from the group of protestants at this remark. Horace Chadwick, who stood next to Colonel Roundtree decided to go to bat in place of the latter. The colonel was palpably too mad to be articulate. “Dick Chilvers,” said Mr. Chadwick, “do you mean to tell your fellow club members and business associates that you give the slightest credence to this fairy tale?” “I mean to tell you,” replied the publisher evenly, “that I have faith in the men I employ. I didn’t see the story until I read it in the paper this morning. I must confess it sounded incredible. I got my night city editor out of bed and he told me that the story had been thoroughly investigated and verified.” “Verified?” shouted Colonel Roundtree, finding his voice again. “Who in the name of Andrew Jackson verified it?” “A gentleman we all know extremely well,” returned the editor. “I’m going to call him up.” He reached for the telephone book on his desk, looked up a number and gave it to the operator. His visitors gathered around his desk whispering excitedly to each other. There was a moment or two of tense silence and then the bell rang. “Is that 3459 Parkway?” he asked. “Please give me Mr. McDonald.” As he waited the distinguished citizens looked at each other in amazement. They moved closer to the telephone. Presently the publisher was talking again. “Is that you, Mac?” he asked. “This is Dick Chilvers. You know what I want to talk to you about, I guess—yes, that’s it—hell?—I should say so—I’ve got nearly an even dozen irate citizens here now and I’m dead certain there are more on the way—Roundtree?—yes, he’s here—yes, he’s a little excited about it——” An indignant snort from the colonel interrupted the conversation. His associates nudged him into silence. “Jennings said you gave Crandall the story,” Chilvers was saying. “You did, eh?—what’s the idea? Come now, Mac, this is serious—don’t laugh like that—why if Roundtree ever heard that laugh he’d commit aggravated assault and battery on the spot—y-e-s—y-e-s—well, of course——” The little group bent forward eagerly to catch every word. The one-sided conversation began to get more and more cryptic to them. “You will, eh,” the publisher continued. “No—not this time. I’ll get this particular story myself—noon, eh?—all right, Mac.” Chilvers hung up the phone and turned to his friends. “Gentlemen,” he remarked easily. “I’m going out on a little assignment myself. I’m going to interview Mr. Donald McDonald of the Merchants Trust Company. He says he’s got another story that’s better than this one. I’ll have to ask you to excuse me until I see him.” “We’ll meet you at his office,” blurted Colonel Roundtree. “There’s something powerful queer about this thing and we’re going to see it through.” “Mac won’t be at his office,” responded the publisher. “He said he’d prefer not to meet any of you until tomorrow. We’ve arranged a—well, a sort of a secret rendezvous.” |
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