Ronald could hardly conceal his astonishment, although that letter K had helped prepare him for the surprise. But Barry Knight didn’t have a family, everyone had said that about him. And this man looked very much neglected. Everything about him cried out to deny the relationship. Would Barry Knight have neglected his own father? Surely not knowingly, but maybe it wasn’t knowingly. Maybe there was a lot more to the story than that.
“Is that so? Won’t you sit down, Mr. Knight?”
“Thank you.” The elderly man returned to the sofa and crossed his legs, then proceeded to drum his finger tips on his knee, apparently a habitual mannerism with him.
“Did Barry ever mention me to you, Mr. Wilford?”
“No, I can’t recall that he did.”
“No, no, I suppose he didn’t,” Mr. Knight returned with a sigh, almost as though talking to himself. “Well, the young are thoughtless, but I won’t say anything more about it. There was blame on both sides.”
His manner became more forward, and he leaned toward Ronald, pointing a finger and tapping it on his knee to emphasize his words. “But he did mention you, Mr. Wilford. Are you on the newspaper?”
“That’s correct.”
“Dear me, I didn’t know that, though I began to suspect it from the way the manager acted when he called you. The way Barry spoke of you, I thought you were a friend rather than a business associate. That’s why I came to you. I didn’t want to go to the paper. I didn’t think Barry would like me to go down there.”
“I consider myself a friend of Barry Knight’s just as much as a business associate,” Ronald assured him, “and I’d do anything I could for you. If you’ll tell me where Barry is, I’ll be glad to put you in touch with him and help you to straighten out your difficulties, whatever they may be.”
“Don’t you know where he is?” The man’s face showed his surprise. “That was the very thing I came here to find out.”
CHAPTER 7
News from Short Vincent
Mr. Knight produced a wrinkled old sheet of paper with Barry’s Franklin Boulevard address on it.
“I stopped out there to see what had happened to my son,” he said, his voice trembling, “and they told me he wasn’t there. Then I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t feel I ought to go to the paper. I wouldn’t say that Barry is exactly ashamed of me, but—well, he has his own life to live, too. I tried to think who his friends might be, but he hardly ever mentioned anyone in his letters to me, and your name was the only one I remembered. And I remembered he had said something about an apartment in Bratenahl, but I didn’t have the street address, and your name isn’t listed in the telephone directory—you must be new here. But I came out here anyway, and tried a few buildings, until I was lucky enough to find the one where your name was listed. And so here I am.”
“You’re from out of town?” Ronald questioned.
“Yes, I live all by myself, a retired railroad man. That’s why it doesn’t cost me anything to travel. I got a lifetime pass. Barry used to write me regular every two weeks, and then when his letters stopped coming I figured I’d better mosey up here and see what the trouble was—I guess you know how it is.”
Ronald could guess very easily. Every two weeks was payday, and Barry must have been sending a check to his father regularly. When the checks stopped coming, his father wanted to know why. There had to be some reason why Barry had never mentioned his father, and the reason was becoming embarrassingly clear. Could the fact that he wanted to avoid his father be the reason for Barry’s leaving town? It didn’t sound likely.
Nevertheless, Mr. Knight’s greed offered Ronald an unexpected opportunity to check into some of the details of Barry’s earlier life.
“The truth is, Mr. Knight, that I don’t know where Barry is myself, and I’d like very much to find him. I don’t want to pry into his personal affairs, but there might be something in his background that would give me a clue about why he left and where he has gone. Where did you and Barry live when he was small?”
“Barry and I live? I’m afraid you still don’t understand the situation, Wilford. Barry’s mother and I were separated when he was just a little shaver. I haven’t seen Barry since he was hardly more than a towheaded toddler. Cute as tricks, it came near to breaking my heart when she took him away from me, but that’s life. I won’t say she didn’t have some cause, but I won’t say it was all my fault, either. There was blame on both sides. And then, I knew she’d bring up the boy to hate me, and so it just didn’t seem right for me to keep coming to see him and opening up old wounds.”
“Where did your wife and Barry live?” asked Ronald smoothly. If this man was a fraud, it would be a good idea to find out right at the start.
“They lived on a little farm down near Imperial. I wouldn’t exactly call it a farm, but they had a few acres, enough for truck farming and such. They lived in with an older couple that didn’t have any children of their own. Then when my wife died—let me see, Barry must have been about twelve or thirteen at the time—the couple kept Barry on and raised him till he got out of school.”
“Didn’t you try to see Barry, even after your wife died?” Ronald persisted.
“Well, no,” said Mr. Knight lamely, “I made some inquiries, and he was getting along fine, and I figured out he was better off with them than he would be with me, especially since I traveled so much on the railroad. I sent him money whenever I could,” he added quickly, “only times were bad, strikes on the railroad, and stuff like that.”
Ronald nodded absently. He hadn’t known of any railroad strike lasting five or six years, from the time Mrs. Knight died until Barry was out of school, and he wondered if Mr. Knight had ever sent home a single dollar toward his son’s support.
“How did you finally get in touch with Barry again?” he asked.
“He was the one who got in touch with me. As I said, his mother brought him up to hate me, but as he got to be a man, I guess he came to wondering what his old man was like, and so he tracked me down. I let him know I was pretty hard up—bad leg wound got me retired from the railroad before I was of pension age—and he began to send me checks. A real right guy, in spite of what my wife told him. I always wanted to meet him, but somehow we never quite got together.”
“Are you sure about all your information, about the little farm near Imperial?” asked Ronald, watching him closely.
“Oh, yes, I’m sure about that part of it,” Mr. Knight answered confidently, “but for the rest of it I have to rely on what my wife said in her letters to me—and she never said much.”
“Mr. Knight, I have reason to believe that Barry never lived in or near Imperial. What would you have to say to that?”
“Oh, he did, he did, I’m sure of that.” He looked perplexed, then his brow cleared. “Oh, I know what you mean. It must be about the name. My wife and I were never divorced, but I know she went back to using her maiden name after she left me.”
“What about Barry? What name did he go under?”
“Well, now, I never thought about that, but it would have been just like her to raise him under that name, too. Yes, sir, that would have been just like Ethel.”
Then that was the explanation of it all, Ronald thought disappointedly. Barry Knight hadn’t adopted a false name after leaving school. Instead he had gone back to using his own real name. He had confided his intention to Dr. Milton, and that accounted for the letter the minister had written. After all the romantic nonsense Ronald had been building up in his own mind about Barry’s mysterious past, it seemed to be something very commonplace, sordid, and dull. Ronald almost wished he hadn’t found out.
Mr. Knight’s story answered another difficulty, too, for it placed Barry squarely on the scene at the time of the gas-station robbery. Ronald felt that his hunch on that part of it had been right, that Barry had broken the window maliciously, and therefore felt responsible for what had later happened to Desmond. He had continued to follow up the case through Dixie Orlando. Then
where was Barry Knight now? He had gone to find Walter Desmond, clearly, either with the idea of clearing up an old injustice, or possibly for some reason having to do with Desmond’s invention. The mystery was very nearly solved, except for a few details, such as why Knight had left without telling anyone, and whether he really had any intention of coming back.
“What was your wife’s maiden name, Mr. Knight?” Ronald inquired.
The man’s eyes flickered. “Johnson, Ethel Johnson. Yes, sir, that was the name she carried when I married her, and it was the name she went back to as soon as she got rid of me.”
Johnson? Ronald didn’t remember whether there was any boy named Johnson on that graduation program, but at least he knew there was no one named Barry. He remembered Carole’s remark: “You answer a riddle with another riddle.” It might have been interesting to go back to Imperial and check into the Johnsons, but he didn’t feel he had time for that right now. His job was to find Barry Knight, and on that particular matter he still didn’t know where to turn.
“Thank you, Mr. Knight. You’ve been very helpful. Where shall I get in touch with you in case I have anything to report?”
Mr. Knight looked very crestfallen. “I don’t like to admit it, Mr. Wilford, but I don’t have a dollar in my pockets—and I won’t have until my next pension check comes through.”
Well, what could Ronald do? He couldn’t turn Mr. Knight out on the streets. No more could he put him on his newspaper expense account without permission. The easiest solution would be to give him a few dollars and tell him to go to a hotel, but he didn’t quite like that answer either. Mr. Knight didn’t seem like the kind of person who would do much to help himself if he felt there was someone else to help him. Besides, it wasn’t possible for Ronald to dismiss a problem so easily, especially when it involved the destitute father of a good friend—and he had to admit that Mr. Knight had been helpful to him.
“You’re welcome to stay here for a few days if you like, Mr. Knight. There’s an extra bedroom until my roommate gets back. But it’s only for a few days,” he reminded him.
“Oh, certainly, Mr. Wilford, it won’t be for more than a few days, I wouldn’t dream of it. If I don’t hear anything from my son by that time, I’ll just have to think of something else. Where’s the best place to apply for assistance in this town? The Travelers’ Aid? Or would the County Welfare be better? Maybe the Red Cross would help me.”
These characters always know their way around, Ronald thought in disgust. Well, if Mr. Knight imagined he could extend his visit beyond a few days, he would find himself badly mistaken, Ronald decided. Help these persons a little bit, and they get the idea they can count on you for everything. It was hard for Ronald to remember that this was the father of Barry Knight, a man who had befriended him on many occasions.
It seemed too late to bother about returning to the office that day. Anyway, he wasn’t sure Mr. Knight had eaten for some time, and he himself was growing hungry.
“What do you think we’d better do for grub, Mr. Knight? I do some light cooking here, but when I want a good meal I usually go to a restaurant. Besides, I’ve been away, and I don’t have very much in stock.”
Mr. Knight opened the refrigerator door. “You’ve got bacon and eggs, and I see coffee and canned milk up on the shelf. That’ll be plenty good enough for me—I’m not at all particular. But we ought to have bread.”
“I’ll run down to the delicatessen and pick up a few things,” Ronald offered, glad to get away. He wanted to call Carole at the office, but didn’t like to phone from home with Mr. Knight there. He looked around, remembering that Mr. Knight was a stranger to him. There wasn’t anything of great value in the apartment, but walking over to his desk, Ronald found a few papers he didn’t want Mr. Knight snooping into, and put them in his pocket. Then he went out, but thought it just as well to drop a word or two to Mr. Carey on his way past.
Carole was still at the office and was eager to hear about his visitor.
“Hold on to your hat, Carole,” he advised her, “for it’s none other than Barry Knight’s father!”
“Ronald, are you sure?” she asked apprehensively. “Knight never mentioned his father to me.”
“Well, I wouldn’t care to vouch for this man’s character, but a few details he gave me jibe with what we know already. As far as I know, no one but ourselves was on to that Imperial angle.”
“Well, then, I guess you’ve got the case almost solved, if Mr. Knight can tell you everything you want to know about Barry.”
“I didn’t say that, Carole. It seems that he and his wife were separated when Barry was just a towheaded toddler, as he puts it. I don’t think he’d even know Barry if he saw him.”
“Isn’t it kind of late for him to be looking up his son after all these years?”
“Not for him. He’s after money, of course. It seems that Barry has been sending him checks every payday, and now that the checks have stopped, he wants to find out why. I’ve got some more things to tell you, but I’ll save them till morning. Meanwhile, there’s one thing I’d like to know. See if you can find the name Johnson on that graduation list, will you?”
He waited half a minute, before she answered, “No, it isn’t here.”
He sighed, and she asked, “Does it matter very much?”
“No, I suppose not, but things would have been much simpler for us if it had been there. I seem to be always groping for something that jumps back out of reach just when I’m about to grasp it. How are you coming with your list of Barry’s enemies?”
It was her turn to sigh. “It’s growing by the minute. It would be a lot easier to make a list up of his friends.”
Whatever Mr. Knight’s failings in personality, they did not extend to his cooking, and Ronald found a delicious meal awaiting him, with bacon, eggs, and coffee done just right.
During the evening the telephone rang and Ronald answered.
“Hello?”
“Wilford?”
“Speaking.”
“Say, Wilford, there’s something I hear about you, but I don’t know whether it’s true or not. Is it the right dope that you’re looking for Dixie Orlando?”
Ronald looked up quickly toward the kitchen, but Mr. Knight was busy rattling the dishes, and Ronald didn’t think he could hear. He answered softly, “Is this Orlando speaking?”
“Naw, this ain’t him. All I want to know is do you really want him?” The man’s voice was muffled, as though he was trying to disguise it.
“I might,” said Ronald cautiously.
“Well, what’s it worth to ya if I finger him for you?”
Finger him! Did this character think Ronald wanted Orlando in order to bump him off, rub him out, take him for a ride?
“It’s not worth one copper cent,” said Ronald firmly. It was just as well to make that clearly understood from the beginning, and they could negotiate from there. Newspapers sometimes find it necessary to pay for information, unfortunately, but not to anonymous telephone callers.
The caller did not seem at all disturbed. “That’s what I thought, but I figured it didn’t hurt none to try.”
“Does that mean you’re going to tell me anyway?” asked Ronald, as there was a little pause.
“I might. Let’s put it this way. I like to do favors for newspaper guys ‘cause I never know when I might need a favor back someday. If I do this for you, can I count on it that you’ll do something back for me if maybe sometime I need it?”
“Sure,” Ronald agreed quickly, “as long at it’s legal. But I don’t see how I can arrange it if you won’t give your name.”
The character thought this over for a while. “I tell you what, let’s rig up a little password between us, like them sentries do. Let’s see, now, how about ‘red jelly beans.’ If you ever hear anybody talking about red jelly beans, you’ll know it’s me and that I got a favor comin’.”
“O.K.,” Ronald consented, hoping that he would never happen to run into anyo
ne by accident with a particular fondness for red jelly beans.
“Then it’s a deal. All right, now, take down this number.” Ronald wrote it down quickly. “It’s a restaurant, and Orlando will be in there for breakfast at eight thirty tomorrow morning.”
“All right, I’ll call him then.”
“Oh, one more thing, Wilford. Be sure you don’t ask for Dixie Orlando and screw everything up. You want to ask for Yankee Pete. You got that? Yankee Pete.”
“I got it,” Ronald assured him, expressed his thanks, and hung up, feeling that he was in the center of some deep, dark conspiracy. There was no doubt in his mind that he had actually been talking to Dixie Orlando himself, and he wondered who these characters thought they were kidding, anyway.
CHAPTER 8
Excess Baggage
Although eight thirty was his regular time for arriving at work, Ronald decided not to report in until after he had talked with Orlando. He figured it might involve some chasing around afterward, and he did not know in what direction it might lead him.
His not-too-welcome guest was up early and had breakfast ready for him, another deftly prepared meal, but Ronald’s manner was not too gracious. He felt he had a rather good idea what sort of man Mr. Knight was, and didn’t intend to give him any encouragement to overstay his welcome.
Of course he couldn’t call Orlando from his apartment, so he went to a pay station again. This was a ridiculous situation, not being able to use his own telephone, and he didn’t intend to put up with it for very long. His roommate would be back in about a week, but he didn’t propose to wait even that long. Jerry was a friendly, understanding young man, but it might take a little explaining as to why it happened that a strange man was occupying his bed.
Ronald dialed the number he had written down, and the call was answered after two rings.
“Costain’s Grille.” That was a little restaurant on Vincent Street, Ronald recalled.
“Is Yankee Pete there?” asked Ronald in a guarded voice that he felt suited the circumstances, but feeling not a little foolish.
The Star Reporter Mystery Page 6
