He nodded grimly. “So did I, Cara. I got him by himself, got a few drinks into him. Word for word, this is what he told me! See what you think of it. Pete said, ‘Mr. Spear, I reckon I’m gettin’ old, an’ mebbe soft in the head. All old people think the same, I reckon, but it do seem like things is not what they once was. Mind ye, Mr. Spear, I ain’t accusin’ no un — but a man ain’t free any more t’come an’ go as he pleases. Y’know, sometimes I used t’get thinkin’ ’bout them furrin countries where they have dictators an’ such-like, an’ I’d wonder why the people puts up with ’em. But now I... I think I know! I’m sorry, Mr. Spear, but I got a wife an’ my daughter’s two kids t’look out fer.’ ”
He stopped, and his face in the semigloom was harsh, thin-lipped. Cara’s voice was taut. She said:
“The... the Guardsmen!”
The phone on the small table beside their press shattered quiet. And they looked at each other as though life itself depended on that call. Phineas Spear crossed to the table in long strides and jerked the receiver off the hook. The mouthpiece quivered with the tension of his grip, but his voice was steady.
“Yes!” he clipped, then shouted, “He did! Coming back now? Man, we’ve won! If Blake’s let him go this far — we’ve won, I tell you! Send the kids down — all you can get. The extra’s ready and there’s ten bucks apiece in it for the boys. Get ’em here fast, Charley — fast!”
He dropped the phone, seized Cara bodily in his arms and whirled her about the room. She clung to him, eyes wide, lips parted, until he placed her once more on her feet and made a lunge for his hat.
“Cara!” he panted then, “Charley Vargas — one guy who’s not afraid to work for the Blade! That was Vargas! Blake let Pierson argue a motion for an appeal. There was hell in court, but Blake’s a man! He cleared ’em out — declared a half-hour’s adjournment to study Pierson’s brief. He’s coming back in five minutes with a decision and you know what it’ll be — what it’s got to be! I’m going.”
She seized the top sheet from a pile of more handbills — ranked piles of them — thousands of copies of the second extra edition. Printed and ready — waiting for the moment that was almost upon them. Her voice husky, trembling on the verge of hysteria, Cara Collin read:
Pierson Wins Appeal For Abel Parkes Blade Holds Key to Southard Mystery — Arrest Promised
“Phineas — who is it? Who murdered Senator Southard? Was it—”
“I dunno,” he grinned, “yet! But I do know Abel Parkes didn’t. And I’m going to find out who did! Hold everything, Cara. Charley Vargas is sending his kids down to broadcast the extra, and they’re bringing their gang. When they come— Here they are now! Let ’em in.”
A confusion of scraping feet on the stairway drew Cara to the door. She opened it — and recoiled before the man who stood there. He was short, fat. He wore his hat low over irritable, snapping eyes. He clipped:
“Why — hello, sweetheart!” He came in. He had a suitcase that he dropped heavily.
Cara Collin backed slowly away. Others followed the squat one: a dark man, tall, with a thin moustache and a sallow, expressionless face; two more: one bearded, bear-like, and the other a weazened man with a beak of a nose and questing black eyes. Another came in, lumbering, grinning at her. He was the biggest of the lot. He had the swollen ears and fiat nose of a fighter. His hands were splayed, shapeless knobs.
Cara retreated to where Spear stood beside the press. She stopped then, in front of him, as though to protect him from them. The fat man rasped:
“So you call this a newspaper, huh?”
“Who are you?” Cara gasped. “What do you want?” The tall dark man grinned faintly.
“Who’s the dame?” he asked. “Your sob-sister — or do you just keep her around to look at?”
Phineas Spear laughed. “Your boss, Lou!” he rapped. “Cara Collin — until I have time to change her name. City editor of the Blade! And yeah — I call it a newspaper! The best in town!”
“Phineas Spear!” She whirled on him. “I hate you! They scared me half to death — and you knew them all the time! I thought they were— Who are they?”
“The fat one,” he grinned, “is Jake Wolcott — after me, the best newsman in America! The gent with the moustache and the gangster face is Lou Rosetti. He thinks he’s the greatest feature-writer in the world, but he isn’t. I am. These two — the guy with the beaver and the one with the nose — are Boswell and Epstein. They’ll tell you they know all there is to know about linotype and rotary presses. And” — Spear moved toward the door, bobbed a stiff left into the fighter’s ribs that brought a grunt and a grin — “the only gentleman of the lot: Lefty Crooks, ex-champion and your personal slave from this time on! Put ’em to work, Cara. Tell ’em the set-up. I bought a plant a month ago and the new machinery’ll be here soon. Then you gorillas’ll wish you were back in Manhattan. S’long.”
The door slammed.
Jake Wolcott grinned at her. Wrinkles of fat spread from his small mouth to his ears, fine crow’s-feet creased the corners of his eyes. He said, “That’s a great guy, Miss Collin! Why, when Socker Spear was workin’ for the—”
“Socker?” she said.
“Sure. That’s what we called him in New York. And I guess he hasn’t changed much. What’s he got into here? He didn’t say in his telegram.”
“Telegram!” Cara’s breath caught. “But... but I don’t understand! How are we going to — pay you? How can Phineas get new machinery? He... we were wiped out last night — in the fire!”
Lou Rosetti’s cold, hard face softened in a sardonic smile. “Wiped out?” he said. “Sister — you don’t know your Phineas! Socker Spear had an uncle. See? The uncle had about ten million bucks and a will. He died. Get it?”
“Ten — million — dollars!” she whispered.
Chapter V
The Cane Clue
Clouds and spreading, gigantic elms obscured the grounds. The Southard home bulked huge, larger than it was in daylight — forbidding, lonely. Forgotten since the furor of investigation that had followed the murder of the old senator, his home stood empty on the knoll that overlooked the town. But if only walls could speak...!
Phineas Spear felt the mysterious, eery presence of the man Justin Southard had been. Felt it in the dark silence, the ghostly rustling of leaves. The harsh grate of a steel jimmy on a window sill, the sudden snap of a broken catch, seemed almost a desecration. But Spear hesitated not at all. He vanished through the open window, and the stalking noiseless figure that stole from the cover of nearby shrubbery followed cautiously, crouched beneath the window he had forced.
If walls could speak...?
But walls can speak — to those who have ears to hear them! They had spoken — unmistakably, incontrovertibly — the walls of the very stairway up which he climbed! Now, if others could add their testimony... those of the panelled, dignified study where Southard had died!
A faint suggestion of light winked from the small flash he carried. Satisfied that curtains were drawn, that inner, folding walnut shutters were closed, Phineas Spear snapped on the light on Southard’s desk. He stood beside it, motionless save for darting eyes that scanned rapidly a room, every detail of which he knew already.
That room had been gone over a dozen times. Books, from the hundreds that lined the walls, had been taken down one by one. Rugs, pictures had been removed. Desk drawers and files had been searched, every inch of the room gone over for a secret panel, a hidden safe, or even a thread — a hair! The police had searched well, honestly, He knew that. The trouble was that they had found only what they were supposed — or allowed — to find. In the study of the man who had devoted himself to a fight against individual, secret power, against gag-rule and the apathy of the people, had been found not one scrap of evidence of that fight. Not a single hint to point to anyone as his murderer!