Far ahead — the impact muffled by the trees and underbrush of Betts Corner — I heard a whump! of metal on metal. Then, just as I cautiously touched the gas, I heard a long-drawn masculine scream.
It was as I knew it would be. Jim’s old truck blocked the road at the blind spot on the corner. Pieces of Scoggins’ car had scattered against oak trees and blackberry vines. Most of the small car was still against the heavy bumpers and reinforced grill of the truck.
He screamed again as I ran past him. Amy’s chubby little body was cocooned inside the truck cab, trussed in a seat belt and a shoulder belt and further protected by the crash helmet and that ridiculous chest protector.
She held her breath while I checked her heartbeat and pulse. Looking inside her crash helmet at her tightly closed eyes, I noted she had removed her gold-rimmed spectacles before the crash.
I found them in her purse. “Put these on right now,” I ordered. “People know you can’t see to drive without these glasses.”
Her blue eyes opened wide and blinked as I adjusted the glasses.
“Bob?”
“Save your innocent look for the inquest. You’ll be okay. Thanks for mentioning that cousin you do not have in Dallas. I might have been in the cab with him if you hadn’t mentioned that fake cousin.”
“You wouldn’t have,” she insisted. Unbuckling her two belts, she peered over the high dash of the old truck. Scoggins screamed twice more, then slumped forward.
She blinked. “I don’t dare get out for a better look?”
“Dammit, no! Stay in the cab. When help comes, act confused and addled. Act like you fainted and don’t know what happened.”
“I want to know.”
I made myself look. “He’s caught in some twisted metal,” I reported. “Blood — ugh! — blood is spurting all over his thigh. I might save him, but I’d get sick. I can’t stand the sight of blood.”
Small ladylike lips curved in a pleased smile. Twin dimples deepened.
“Neither can I,” she lied in her little girl voice.
Waiting for Scoggins to die, I thought of how little he understood his favorite topic, psychology. At age eight, Amy had clobbered me with her toy shovel. Bright blood had gushed from my forehead, from that place where I carry a scar even today. I had danced and yelled in sheer panic. She had stood before me with that prim, satisfied smile, her blue eyes fascinated just as they were now.
When you move in on any spoiled, helpless-appearing female, whether she is eight or sixty-seven, beware. I wanted to give this bit of wisdom to that son-of-a-bitch “Professor” Scoggins, to tease him with it before he died. But before I got nerve enough to do it, he was dead. Legally dead as a result of what the Caton County authorities happily called an “accident.”
Calloway’s Code
by O. Henry
The New York Enterprise sent H. B. Calloway as special correspondent to the Russo-Japanese-Portsmouth war.
For two months Calloway hung about Yokohama and Tokyo, shaking dice with the other correspondents for drinks of ’rickshaws — oh, no, that’s something to ride in; anyhow, he wasn’t earning the salary that his paper was paying him. But that was not Calloway’s fault. The little brown men who held the strings of Fate between their fingers were not ready for the readers of the Enterprise to season their breakfast bacon and eggs with the battles of the descendants of the gods.
But soon the column of correspondents that were to go out with — the First Army tightened their field-glass belts and went down to the Yalu with Kuroki. Calloway was one of these.
Now, this is no history of the battle of Yalu River. That has been told in detail by the correspondents who gazed at the shrapnel smoke rings from a distance of three miles. But, for justice’s sake, let it be understood that the Japanese commander prohibited a nearer view.
Calloway’s feat was accomplished before the battle. What he did was to furnish the Enterprise with the biggest beat of the war. That paper published exclusively and in detail the news of the attack on the lines of the Russian General Zassulitch on the same day that it was made. No other paper printed a word about it for two days afterward, except a London paper, whose account was absolutely incorrect and untrue.
Calloway did this in face of the fact that General Kuroki was making his moves and laying his plans with the profoundest secrecy as far as the world outside his camps was concerned. The correspondents were forbidden to send out any news whatever of his plans; and every message that was allowed on the wires was censored with rigid severity.
The correspondent for the London paper handed in a cablegram describing Kuroki’s plans; but as it was wrong from beginning to end the censor grinned and let it go through.
So, there they were — Kuroki on one side of the Yalu with forty-two thousand infantry, five thousand cavalry, and one hundred and twenty-four guns. On the other side Zassulitch waited for him with only twenty-three thousand men, and with a long stretch of river to guard. And Calloway had got hold of some important inside information that he knew would bring the Enterprise staff around a cablegram as thick as flies around a Park Row lemonade stand. If he could only get that message past the censor — the new censor who had arrived and taken his post that day!
Calloway did the obviously proper thing. He lit his pipe and sat down on a gun carriage to think it over. And there we must leave him; for the rest of the story belongs to Vesey, a sixteen-dollar-a-week reporter on the Enterprise.
Calloway’s cablegram was handed to the managing editor at four o’clock in the afternoon. He read it three times; and then drew a pocket mirror from a pigeon hole in his desk, and looked at his reflection carefully. Then he went over to the desk of Boyd, his assistant (he usually called Boyd when he wanted him), and laid the cablegram before him.
“It’s from Calloway,” he said. “See what you make of it.”
The message was dated at Wi-ju, and these were the words of it:
Foregone preconcerted rash witching goes muffled rumor mine dark silent unfortunate richmond existing great hotly brute select mooted parlous beggars ye angel incontrovertible.
Boyd read it twice.
“It’s either a cipher or a sunstroke,” said he.
“Ever hear of anything like a code in the office — a secret code?” asked the m. e., who had held his desk for only two years. Managing editors come and go.
“None except the vernacular that the lady specials write in,” said Boyd. “Couldn’t be an acrostic, could it?”
“I thought of that,” said the m. e., “but the beginning letters contain only four vowels. It must be a code of some sort.”
“Try ’em in groups,” suggested Boyd. “Let’s see — ‘Rash witching goes’ not with me it doesn’t. ‘Muffled rumor mine’ — must have an underground wire. ‘Dark silent unfortunate richmond’ — no reason why he should knock that town so hard. ‘Existing great hotly’ — no, it doesn’t pan out. I’ll call Scott.”
The city editor came in a hurry, and tried his luck. A city editor must know something about everything; so Scott knew a little about cipher writing.
“It may be what is called an inverted alphabet cipher,” said he. “I’ll try that. ‘R’ seems to be the oftenest used initial letter, with the exception of ‘m.’ Assuming ‘r’ to mean ‘e,’ the most frequently used vowel, we transpose the letters — so.”