The Star Reporter Mystery

by Norvin Pallas LLC

  “Another point was that he didn’t want the facts about my father’s past conviction to be introduced into the trial. I think there’s some rule of law or other that the prosecution can’t introduce testimony about past convictions, but if my father went on the stand and testified about his past life, then the prosecution under cross-examination might be able to bring this point out. The particular rule of law involved wasn’t clear to me then, and isn’t clear to me now.

  “Anyway, for reasons that seemed all right to me at the time, I was kept off the witness stand. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t even present at the trial. My father said he didn’t want me to miss school, but I imagine his more real concern was that he wanted to spare me the ordeal of the trial.

  “I believe our lawyer really thought my father was innocent. He felt the best defense would be merely to introduce some character witnesses for my father, along with a little expert testimony on locks and things. I saw my father and the lawyer every day after court was adjourned. They acted cheerful and led me to believe things were going very well. It was only when I read about the trial afterward that I learned how strong the prosecution case was, and how feeble the defense was. We merely had a few witnesses like Doctor Milton, who said they had always thought my father was a good man, and then there was a locksmith who said, well, maybe this could have happened, or maybe that could have happened. His testimony wavered so that it wouldn’t have convinced anybody. And my father’s story of what happened that night was never presented to the jury at all, which must have seemed suspicious to them. But at the time I was feeling rather optimistic. I knew my father was innocent, and I simply couldn’t believe that an innocent man would be convicted.

  “When I heard the news of the verdict I was completely stunned. One to ten years on a false charge! I felt now that a serious mistake had been made in not putting me on the stand. I pleaded with the lawyer to do something, try for a new trial, take my deposition, anything—but he soothed me over. He explained to me that one to ten years really meant my father could apply for a parole in about nine months. Even a new trial, if he could gain it, might produce the same result, and meanwhile the time my father was serving wouldn’t count toward his sentence. My father didn’t want to appeal, but felt that the best thing would be to begin serving his sentence at once.

  “Then I talked to my father. He spoke to me cheerfully, as though he didn’t really mind the sentence, and assured me that it wouldn’t seem so long. He spoke to me of some of his hopes for me, assured me there was nothing I could do or say that would change the verdict, and said he wanted me to go on and work hard and finish school. Perhaps he would be seeing me not long after that, but in case he didn’t, I was to try to build the best sort of life that I could for myself. He didn’t tell me he was innocent—we both knew that he was and it wasn’t necessary to say it—and his final words were to give me his fondest blessing. When they took him away, I sat down and cried like a baby. Even then I had hopes of seeing him in nine months. I didn’t know it would stretch out to six years.

  “Well, I went on, of course. Things weren’t the same as they had been before. I was inclined to be unusually sensitive, and this trial hadn’t helped me any, so I imagined everybody was pointing the finger of scorn at me. I dropped off the basketball team, dropped out of pretty nearly everything. About all I did was go to school and come home and study, so that I managed to finish with high marks, as my father had hoped for me.

  “Our home was closed down, and I boarded with a family in the village. We weren’t well to do, but my father had some savings, and along with what I could earn at odd jobs it was enough to see me through school. You can understand how it hurt to realize the money I was living on could have been used to appeal my father’s case and might have freed him. Don, down at the service station, was very kind to me and offered to let me work there, but that was one job I wouldn’t take. I felt that his testimony was principally responsible for sending my father to prison, and that he could have saved him if he had tried.

  “I graduated from high school the following June. I imagine you can understand by now why I was anxious to get away from Imperial, and after getting the minister to write me a letter of recommendation, I left the village and came on to the city. I still felt a sense of guilt and shame over the trial so I thought I ought to change my name, and I’m afraid I committed an act of forgery on the minister’s letter. Anyway, I was hired by the newspaper, which didn’t check my reference just as I had hoped, and I guess you can pretty well carry the story on from there.”

  “Did you keep in touch with your father while he was in prison?” Ronald inquired of him.

  “No, Wilford, I didn’t—not directly, though I kept informed of his circumstances. There had been something between us that would be hard to explain, a kind of respect and esteem we had always felt for each other. Somehow the trial had changed that. I hadn’t testified for him, and he had concealed from me the old crime he had committed as a young man, something I never knew about until he was sentenced to prison again. I knew that my father still held as much affection for me as he ever did, but that old feeling of mutual trust had somehow vanished between us. When he got out of prison he made no attempt to look me up, feeling I suppose that his past record might prove a blot on my name. If we were to get together again, I had to find him, and that is just what I did the first chance I could. We met here at Lonely Valley, and I feel that we’re now closer together than we ever were before. Between ourselves, the past is wiped clean. Unfortunately, that may not be the end of it. It isn’t so easy to clear the slate between ourselves and the rest of the world, and that is the thing that stands between me and my return to the newspaper.”

  “Your father came up here to negotiate about his invention, didn’t he?”

  “That’s right. I rather thought you’d caught on to that.”

  “And the man he was negotiating with was Mr. Bogus?”

  “You might say that. It’s not his real name, of course. Didn’t you recognize him? You’ve met him once before.”

  “His face did look just a little bit familiar,” said Ronald in wonder. “Is he from Detroit?”

  “Near Detroit. You’ve pinned it down close enough.”

  “Then he was a speaker at that press reception a couple of months back. If he’d happened to speak on birds at the banquet, I would have recognized him this time. Well, I guess I’ll just have to chalk that up as another one of my lapses, though it’s getting monotonous,” he added resignedly.

  “Yes, he’s the big wind in one of those motor corporations. At the time of the reception I had a private interview with him at which I mentioned my father’s invention. He didn’t say anything then, nor did I ever hear anything about it afterward. He must have gone directly to my father about it and arranged for a demonstration up here in Lonely Valley.”

  “Then they have been negotiating?” Ronald asked, remembering that Mr. Bogus was due to leave the lodge. “Did anything come of it?”

  “I don’t know yet,” said Knight tiredly. “That’s what I’m anxious to find out.”

  In spite of their protracted talk, they had been walking fairly rapidly. Ronald had noticed Knight looking at his illuminated wrist watch often, as though trying to time something. They had now reached the mouth of Lonely Valley, and they observed a number of flares up on the hillside, flaming high against the sky, with several black forms flitting about.

  “Professor Villinger,” Knight explained, “with a couple of assistants from the village. I know he’s been worried about this hill for a long time. Something about the decreasing cohesion with the thaw, I’ve been told.”

  “Do you think there’s any danger in our skirting the bottom of the hill?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Apparently the professor doesn’t think so, or he would have had the bottom of the hill marked out as a danger spot.”

  “Isn’t that a man coming down the hill? Maybe he’s going to set up flares down here now.”


  “Maybe, but let’s not wait for him. I’m anxious to get to the cabin. Don’t come along if you think it’s dangerous.”

  “Oh, I guess my neck’s no more valuable than yours. Let’s go.”

  They made their way around the high drifts of snow lying just below the hills at the entrance to the valley and went on into the valley itself. It was tougher going now, with the hills cutting off much of the light from the sky. There were drifts of snow to be avoided, too, but Knight was apparently well acquainted with the path, and by sticking close behind him Ronald managed to avoid any trouble.

  They had proceeded for about half an hour up the valley, and surely must be nearing the cabin, Ronald thought, when there was a sound like a sudden clap of thunder. It was followed after a few seconds’ silence by another clap, and there slowly developed the low but mounting rumble of huge blocks of snow breaking off and gathering momentum as they tumbled down into the valley.

  CHAPTER 19

  A Run through the Night

  The distant rumbling came to an end, but the silence was almost as ominous.

  “If there was to be dynamiting, why wasn’t there some notice?” asked Ted.

  “There was,” Lister told him. “The bulletin board by the front door had it, but you and your brother were too busy sneaking out the back door. What’s the difference? There’ll be guards up around the danger area.”

  “Doesn’t an explosion like that sometimes start avalanches on other hills in the area?”

  “The professor didn’t think it would, and those fellows sometimes know what they’re doing.”

  But the professor could have been wrong, Ted thought, or maybe he was too late. Perhaps this was a real avalanche after all, breaking off before the professor had time to touch off the explosion. Where did this leave Ronald? Had he been in the danger area? There was a good chance he was, for now that Ted knew Mr. Desmond was staying at a cabin up in Lonely Valley, that was probably where Barry Knight had gone the night before. Maybe he had gone again tonight, and Ronald had gone with him.

  Ted stood up and stared at the others tensely. “I’m going back to the lodge,” he announced, satisfied that there was nothing more he could do here. He reached out for his coat. “Does anybody want to stop me?”

  Grossen made a move in his direction, and Ted braced himself to meet him, but Lister dismissed Grossen with a wave of his hand.

  “Let him go. I think that Ted all unwittingly has told us exactly what we wanted to know. The conference was in Lonely Valley, not here, but things being what they are, I think I’d just as soon be here as there.”

  Zipping up his jacket, Ted went out without looking at any of the others. He put on his snowshoes and started down the dark trail. He passed the deserted cabin, and found the clump of trees that served as his landmark. Then he turned to the north. It was a little lighter here now that he was farther away from the low hills, but not enough to help him greatly. Finding it impossible to keep to the trail made by his footprints on the way up, he didn’t try, but set his course by dead reckoning. Overhead Orion was still brilliant, but had moved considerably farther to the west.

  Time passed as Ted trudged on. Surely Ronald would have been careful, surely he was all right. But the thought that something might have gone wrong lent wings to his steps. The low-lying plain through which he was passing was desolate, swept remorselessly by the wind until the ground was nearly bare in spots. There were few trees, he saw no other persons, no trace of human habitation.

  He had forgotten to look at his watch when he left the cabin, so he had no idea how long he had been out. But it was beginning to seem long—too long. The lights of the lodge should have come into sight before this. Maybe he had passed it, maybe the low hill back of the lodge had cut off his vision and he hadn’t noticed. Panic urged him to turn around, retrace his steps, take a wide circle in the hopes of picking up the lodge, but he forced himself to be calm.

  He tried to work out his situation logically. If he really was past the lodge and was still heading north, he was in trouble. He couldn’t be sure of finding shelter, and while he felt that if necessary he could keep on walking all night so he wouldn’t freeze, there was still no assurance he would be able to find his way in the morning. This wilderness was tricky. He might actually be very close to home without realizing it. Even a searching party, if one should be dispatched, might not find him in time.

  On the other hand if he started circling around wildly and aimlessly, he was likely to get nowhere at all. He would soon be hopelessly confused, and might finally drop in his tracks. If he could find the footprints he or the others had made on their way up he would be all right, but with the freshening wind carrying the snow across the ground in little gusts, there seemed only a remote chance of that.

  When you don’t know what to do, the best thing is to act as logically as you can, Ted decided. Where had he made a mistake, where had he gone wrong? Chances were that his time sense had failed him, and that he hadn’t been en route nearly as long as he thought. He looked at his watch, trying to decide the very minimum of time that he had been on the trail. When he had arrived at this, he thought that surely another half hour would bring him to the lodge, unless he was lost. The best thing to do was to assume he was on the right path and keep going. If he didn’t come to the lodge in half an hour, then he could be sure he had passed it, and would have to try to figure out something else.

  And twenty minutes later his logic proved its value as the lodge came into sight. He hadn’t been lost at all, only afraid that he might be, which is nearly as bad and sometimes produces the very result that is feared.

  Stopping only long enough to divest himself of his snow-shoes, he hurried into the lodge and went directly to the desk.

  “Where is my brother?” he asked of Hank.

  “Your brother? Ted, I’m not sure—”

  “Is he up at Lonely Valley?” he demanded. “Is that where the avalanche took place?”

  “Yes, Ted, it was at Lonely Valley, but don’t call it an avalanche. It was just that professor playing with his toys. I don’t think there was any danger of snowslides; he was just anxious to see if he could set one off by an explosion. Since he had the necessary permits, there was nothing I could do to stop him. At the very least he could have posted the area and put off this business for a couple of days until after you newspapermen had gone home. Unfavorable publicity like this could wreck my business.”

  “You haven’t told me where Ron is,” Ted reminded him. “Is he all right?”

  “Oh, he must be all right. Larry Desmond knew about the dynamiting, and if he went up to Lonely Valley, it was because he wanted it that way. They must be all right, only it will be a couple of days before the power snow sled will be able to get through to them.”

  “You mean I’ll have to wait a couple of days to find out if Ron is safe?”

  “Oh, no, it’ll be possible to signal to them from the hills in the morning. But you won’t be able to reach him. The hills in Lonely Valley are difficult enough in summer, but completely impassable in winter.”

  “Hank,” said Ted anxiously, “is there anything more you can tell me about this business? I’m pretty sure Ronald didn’t know about the dynamiting, and had no idea he was going to be cut off from everything for a few days. This puts me on a spot because I don’t know what he would have wanted to do next. I’ve got to make some effort to get in touch with the newspaper, or they’ll wonder what’s happened.”

  “Well, Ted,” said Hank thoughtfully, “I think I can tell you pretty much all I know. Larry Desmond told me that he didn’t particularly want to meet your brother, but that if he did it would be all right. The thing he was most anxious about was keeping away from Lister.”

  “Do you know what Larry was doing up here?”

  “Oh, yes, he was looking for his father. Walter Desmond was an old friend of mine. He came up here, needing some out-of-the-way place to experiment and conduct a delicate negotiation. The lo
dge wouldn’t do, partly because some of his gadgets were pretty noisy, and partly because Mr. Bogus insisted upon complete privacy, even though Walter Desmond didn’t feel that he had anything to hide.”

  “Then did Mr. Bogus go up to Lonely Valley tonight?”

  “Nope, he’s in bed and sound asleep. I know because I took him up a cup of coffee not half an hour ago.”

  So when Mr. Bogus said he wanted to get to bed early to make an early start he had been telling the exact truth. Lister had been wrong, Ted recalled. People who are accustomed to lying often find it difficult to believe that other people aren’t lying, too.

  That seemed to be all Hank knew or was willing to tell, and Ted finally turned away from the desk. The things Hank had told him went far to confirm some of Ronald’s theories, but they still didn’t explain everything.