Kilo : being the love story of Eliph' Hewlitt, book agent

by Ellis Parker Butler

  CHAPTER XIV. Something Turns Up

  Something turned up the very next day. It turned all Kilo upside down asnothing had for years, and created such a demand for the TIMES that J.T. Jones had to print an extra edition of sixty copies, and he wouldhave printed ten more if his press had not broken down.

  Across two columns--the TIMES never used over one column headlinesexcept for the elections--blazed the work "GRAFT," and beneath, in but asize or two smaller, stared the "sub-head" "OFFICIAL OF KILO CORRUPTED.CITIZENS' PARTY ROTTEN TO THE CORE. PROMINENT CITIZEN IMPLICATED."Beneath this followed the moral of it, "The City, as Predicted inThese Columns, Suffers for Departing from The Beneficent Rule of theRepublican Party."

  Attorney Toole was sitting in his office when the boy from the TIMESdelivered the paper to him. He smiled as he opened the damp sheet, forhe extracted more amusement than news from the little paper, but as heturned it the headlines caught his eye, and instantly he was deep inthe columns. Someone had sprung his mine before he had intended--ithad exploded prematurely and with, what seemed to him, as he read on, afutile insipidity.

  There were full two columns of it. There were hints and innuendoes, toowell veiled, but no names mentioned. The specific act of graft was notbrought to the surface. It was as if the writer had a "spread" ofsome vaguely uncertain rumor, and yet there was not doubt that ColonelGuthrie and Mayor Stitz and the fire-extinguishers were meant. Theattorney could see that, and he had an idea that the writer had meantto tell more than he really did tell. The veiled allusions were sothoroughly veiled in words that they were buried as if under mountainsof veils. Each slight hint was swamped in morasses of quotations andfine flourishes, overgrown and hidden by tropical verbiage, and coveredup by philosophical and political phrases until nothing of the hintcould be seen. As he read on the attorney could see Doc Weaver talking,as plainly as if he stood before him; he could see him at his desk ina frenzy of composition, and he recognized the apt quotations fromShakespeare that were Doc's specialty. Doc Weaver had written it.

  The attorney laid the paper down and studied the matter. How could Dochave learned of the affair? Skinner, angry as he had been at having tobuy the four fire-extinguishers, would never have dared to wreck theparty he had helped to create. The Colonel would have been no such fool.Stitz? He would hardly accuse himself. Who then?

  One passage set the attorney thinking again as he re-read the article."'Thinks are seldom what they seem,' as the poet says, which is as trueas that 'Honesty is the best policy.' And as Shakespeare says, 'Towhat base ends,' for all this disreputable graft centers around certainbrilliant objects that are not what the guilty bribers and bribeessuppose them to be. While we shudder with horror at the temerity of thesinners we shake with laughter as we think of their faces as they willbe when they realize that they are mortals to whom the immortal bardrefers when he enunciates the truth, 'What fools these mortals be!'"

  "Certain brilliant objects" could mean nothing but the lung-testers.Eliph' Hewlitt had that secret, and Eliph' Hewlitt boarded with DocWeaver. The attorney felt a sudden rush of anger. It was to thisintermeddling book agent, then, that he owed the premature explosion ofthe mine that was to have blown the Citizens' Party to fragments, and tohave landed the fragments in the basket held ready by Attorney Toole?

  The distribution of that week's TIMES acted like a tonic on the townstreets. New life followed in the wake of the boy as he carried thepaper from door to door. It began at the corner of Main and CrossStreets, and as the boy proceeded, the merchants, the loafers, and thecustomers came from the stores and gathered in knots that formed quicklyand dissolved again as the parts passed from one group to another,questioning, arguing, and guessing. The attorney looked out of hiswindow. Across the street he could see the office of the TIMES, and T.J. already besieged by questioners, to whom he was evidently giving akind but decided refusal of further information. The editor was wavingthem away with his hands. Some of the editor's visitors handed T. J.money, and carried away copies of the TIMES, but all went, gentlyurged by the editor, and joined one or another of the groups below. Theattorney drew on his coat. He would postpone his interview with Eliph'Hewlitt; Thomas Jefferson Jones was the man he wanted to see at thatmoment.

  It was difficult for the attorney to retain his enigmatical smiles ashe climbed the stairs to the TIMES office. He was angry, but he knew thevalue of that irritating smile that hinted superiority and a knowledgeof hidden details. He needed it in his talk with the editor.

  It is odd how common interests will bring men together. And sometimeshow common interests will not. The attorney and the editor had been asone man in polite attentions to Susan Bell, Mrs. Smith's protegee, atfirst, but as their acquaintance with her grew they seemed to like eachother less. They no longer consulted each other on the best methods ofbringing Republican rule back to Kilo. They did not consult togetherat all. The attorney coldly ignored the editor, and his irritation,beginning in this rivalry, was increased by the growing suspicion thatthe editor dared look toward the leadership of the Republican party inKilo.

  It all angered the attorney. What right had a country editor to competewith a man of talent, with a member of the bar, with Attorney Toole? Wasthis the thanks a rising lawyer should receive for leaving the superiorculture of Franklin and bringing his talents to add luster to the bleakunimportance of Kilo? The very impertinence of it angered him. Toole,a man whose name would one day ring in the hall of Congress and perhapsstand at the head of the nation's officers as chief executive, to bebothered by the interference of a Jones! By the interference of a manwho spent his time collecting news of measles and hog cholera! It wasabout time T. J. Jones was told a few things.

  As Toole entered the printing office T. J. was handing a copy of theTIMES to a customer, and the editor turned, and, seeing who his visitorwas, held up his hand playfully.

  "No use!" he exclaimed. "I can't say anything about it, except what'sin the paper. Contributed article, and the editor sworn to silence, youknow."

  The attorney seated himself on the editor's desk, pushing a pile ofpapers out of his way.

  "That's all right, Jones," he said. "That's for the"--he waved his handtoward the window--"for the fellow citizens; for the populace. This isbetween ourselves."

  "I'd like to," said Jones, "but really, I can't say anything about it. Ipromised faithfully I would not betray my contributor's confidence."

  "Now, do I look so green as that?" asked Toole. "Nonsense! Doc Weaverwrote that rot." He smiled. "He spread himself, didn't he?"

  The editor remained motionless.

  "I have nothing whatever to say," he remarked, noncommittally.

  "Well, I have!" cried the attorney. "I'll tell you that it is poor workfor you to steal my thunder and attempt to use it without consultingme! It is poor work, and mean work. You want to be boss of this partyin Kilo county, that's what you want. And you haven't the capacity. Youhave proved it right here, right here in this silly sheet of yours.You hit on a big thing, and you spoil it. You are so anxious that Tooleshall get no credit that you rush it into print and make a fizzle of it.I know who the traitors to the party are--you are one. Doc Weaver withhis elegant style and his Shakespeare is another. And that miserableintermeddling little book agent is another. You make me sick."

  The editor stood like a statue, and his face was as white. The attorneydropped his words slowly from lips that still wore the tantalizingsmile.

  "The childishness amuses me," said the attorney. "It makes me smile. Whydidn't you give names, since you had them? Why didn't you tell it all,and do the party some good, as well as doing me some harm, if that waswhat you were after--and I don't know what you were after if it wasn'tthat? Why don't you get a schoolboy to edit your paper for you?"

  T. J. ground his nails into the palms of his hands. He meant to retainpossession of his temper, but it was boiling within. He said nothing asthe attorney indolently arose from his seat on the desk; he was resolvedto do nothing, but when the attorney brushed against him
in passing,turning his superior smile full in his face, he raised his arm. The nextmoment the two men were lying beside the press, struggling and gasping,locked fast and fighting for advantage, legs intertwined and eachgrasping the other by a wrist. The editor was on top, but the heavierattorney was working with the energy of hate, and as they panted andstruggled the door opened and Eliph' Hewlitt entered.

  There was strength in his wiry arms, and he threw himself upon the upperman and dragged him backward. The attorney loosened his hold and the twomen stood up, panting and gulping, and soon began to brush their clothesand look at the floor for dropped articles, as men do who have foughtinconclusively and are not sorry to have been parted. The only realdamage seemed to have been done to Eliph's spectacles, which he hadshaken off in his efforts, and which had been crushed beneath a heel.The attorney presently smiled, but it was a silly smile, and then hewent out of the door and down the street.

  Eliph' coughed gently behind his hand, as if to excuse his intrusion.

  "Quarreling?" he suggested. "I used to wrestle some when I was a boy.But not much. I hadn't then the rules, given on page 554 of Jarby'sEncyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art,including "How to Wrestle, How to Defend Oneself Against Sudden Attack,Jui Jitsu," et cetery, with wood cuts showing the best holds and howto get them. All this being but one of one thousand and one subjectstreated of in this work, the price of which is but five dollars, neatlybound in cloth."

  The editor had turned his back and was staring angrily out of thewindow--sulkily tremulous would be a better description, perhaps--whenhe suddenly cried out. Eliph' searched hurriedly in his pockets foranother pair of spectacles, found them and put them on, and looked wherethe editor pointed. Across the street the attorney, backed up againstthe wall of the bank, was defending his face with one arm, and with hisright hand seeking to grasp a whip that was raining blows upon his faceand head. Someone grasped the whip from behind and wrenched it from thehand of the attorney's assailant, and as the man turned angrily, the twoin the window saw that it was Colonel Guthrie.

  They heard him cursing those who had taken the whip from him, ending byloudly justifying himself for what he had done to the attorney, and sawthe attorney step forward to quell the Colonel's hot words. The Colonelput up both his hands and shouted, and some from the crowd, graspingthe attorney about the waist and arms, as if the feared he was about toattack the older man, hurried him away, speaking soothing words to him.

  The Colonel rioted on. Nothing could have stopped him. He pulled a copyof the TIMES from his pocket and slapped it with his hand as he abusedthe attorney for having given T. J. Jones the facts of the article.

  He lit it be plainly known, in his anger, that the article called hima giver of graft. The crowd stood silent, as crowds stand about somedrunken man, for the Colonel was drunk with wrath, and wordy with it,talking to himself as drunken men do. He finished, and the crowd openeda passage through itself to let him pass, and Skinner, who, in apron andbare arms, had viewed his rival's wrath from a safe place on the edge ofthe group, backed away. The Colonel, mumbling, caught sight of him, andwith one swift motion of the arm grasped him by the shirt band.

  "You!" he shouted, pulling the shirt band until Skinner grew purplein the face. "You! You done it! Why couldn't you buy themfire-extinguishers like a man? You made me buy up that Dutchman. Iwouldn't 'a' had to do it but for you."

  He gave the choking butcher an extra shake, and raised his hand tostrike him, but again the crowd interfered, and seized the Colonel, andhurried him away.

  The butcher stood stupidly and rubbed his neck, waiting for the witsthat had been choked out of him to return, and far down the street MayorStitz, hearing a noise, came out on his front platform and looked up thestreet. It appeared to him that something was going on, and sticking hisawl in the door of his car, he walked blandly up the street to where theremnant of the crowd formed a half circle around the butcher. He crowdedthrough, saying, "Look out, the mayor is coming. Stand one side yet forthe mayor!"

  The butcher looked and saw before him the round, innocent face of themayor, topped by the mayor's round bald head. He raised his large, fathand, and in vent for all his injured feelings brought it down, smack!On the smooth bald spot.

  "Ouw-etch!" said the mayor.

  He was surprised. He backed away and rubbed the top of his head,and what he said next was a rapid string of real, genuine German;exclamations, compound tenses, and irregular verbs and all that makesGerman a useful, forceful language. As long as he rubbed his head--witha rotary motion--he spoke German; then he stopped rubbing and spokeEnglish.

  "So is it you treat your mayor!" he exclaimed indignantly. "Such a townis Kilo, to give mayors a klop on the head! Donnerblitzenvetter! Not sois it in Germany." He turned to the crowd. "A klop on the head! It isnot for klops on the head that I am mayor. No. I resign out of thismayor business. Go get another mayor, such as likes klops on the head. Iam no mayor. I am resigned."

  He turned and walked slowly back to his car, pulled the awl out of thedoor, and went inside.

  The editor moved away from the window. He seated himself at his desk andleaned his head on his arms and thought.

  "Headache?" asked Eliph'.

  "No," said the editor, lifting his head. "I'm trying to think this thingout. Guthrie is in it, and Skinner must be in it, and Stitz. And thatfellow across the way said you knew something about it, and he said DocWeaver wrote the article. No," he added hastily, as Eliph' offered tospeak, "let me think it out myself."

  He leaned his head on his hand, and gazed at the attorney's office. Hedrew the week's copy of the TIMES toward him and read over the articlethat had caused all the trouble.

  "It might be that fire-extinguishers ordinance," he said slowly. "Stitzpushed that through. And Skinner had to buy them. And--they were ownedby Miss Briggs and the Colonel negotiated the sale." He jumped upand turned over the file of back numbers of the TIMES. He found theannouncement he had made of the arrival of Eliph', and the report ofthe meeting of the city council that had passed the fire-extinguishersordinance. Eliph' had been in town before the ordinance had passed.Eliph' boarded now with Doc Weaver. Again he read the article in theTIMES, seeking for the meanings that Doc knew so well how to hide. Hepaused at the "Things are seldom what they seem" lines, and consideredit. Suddenly he arose and put on his hat.

  "Wait here," he said, "I'll be back."

  When he returned he was smiling. He had visited Skinner's Opera Houseand had examined the fire-extinguishers where they sat, each on itsbracket.

  "Hewlitt," he said, "when you told Doc about the fire-extinguishers didyou tell him they were lung-testers?"

  The little book agent stared at the editor.

  "I never told," he exclaimed. "I have never said a word to Doc Weaver,nor to anyone about them. Not a word. I have kept it as sacred as thesecret of the Man in the Iron Mask, a full account of whom, togetherwith a wood cut, is given on page 231, together with 'All the World'sFamous Mysteries,' this being but one feature of Jarby's----"

  "All right," said the editor. "And you never told him about the graft?"

  The blank amazement on the book agent's face was sufficient answer.

  "I've got to go out," said the editor. "I've got some reporting to do.You'll excuse me. I want to see Stitz. And Skinner. And Guthrie. I wishDoc hadn't gone to his State Medical Society meeting to-day."

  Eliph' went out with the editor, who locked the door behind him.

  "Don't say anything," said the editor, "but I think there will be anextra edition of the TIMES out to-morrow."