Part 23 (1/2)

”Why, it--it don't mean nothin',” he stated mildly. ”That newspaper trash ain't no account, anyway you look at it.”

”Then why do they print it?” she stormed. ”How do they dare to print it? They've been doing it for days--weeks!”

He felt more equal to that question. The answer fairly popped into his brain.

”They hev to, I reckon,” he said with a fine semblance of cheerfulness.

”If they didn't maybe everybody'd be so sure he'd win that they wouldn't even bother to go to see it.” And then, very carelessly, as though it was of little importance: ”Don't know's I would hev thought of goin' myself if it hadn't been for that. It's advertisin' I reckon--just advertisin'!”

Her fists came down from her chin; her whole body relaxed. It was that bewildering change of mood which he could never hope to follow. She even started toward him.

”Wouldn't have thought of it!” she repeated. ”Why--why, you don't mean that you _aren't_ going?”

It was quite as though she had never considered the possibility of such a contingency. Old Jerry's mouth dropped open while he stared at her.

”Go,” he stammered, ”me go! Why, it's goin' to happen tomorrow night!”

She nodded her head in apparent unconsciousness of his astonishment.

”You'll have to leave on the early train,” she agreed, ”and--and so I won't see you again.”

She turned her back upon him for a moment. He realized that she was fumbling inside the throat of the little, too-tight blouse. When she faced him again there was something in the palm of her outstretched hand.

”I've been waiting for you to come tonight,” she went on, ”and it was hard waiting. That's why I tore the paper up, I think. And now, will you--will you give him this for me--give it to him when he has won?

You won't have to say anything.” She hesitated. ”I--I think he'll understand!”

Old Jerry reached out and took it from her--a bit of a red silk bow, dotted with silver spangles. He gazed at it a moment before he tucked it away in an inside pocket, and in that moment of respite his brain raced madly.

”Of course I figured on goin',” he said, when his breath returned, ”but I been a little undecided--jest a trifle! But I ought to be there; he might be a mite anxious if they wasn't somebody from home.

And I'll give it to him then--I'll give it to him when he's won!”

He went a bit unsteadily back to his waiting buggy.

”She had that all ready to give me,” he said to himself as he climbed up to the high seat. Tentatively his fingers touched the little lump that the spangly bow of red made inside his coat. ”She's had it all ready for me--mebby for days! But how'd she know I was a-goin'?” he asked himself. ”How'd _she_ know, when I didn't know myself?”

He gave it up as a feminine whimsicality too deep for mere male wisdom. Once on the way back he thought of the route that would go mailless the next day.

”'Twon't hurt 'em none to wait a day or so,” he stated, and his voice was just a little tinged with importance. ”Maybe it'll do 'em good.

And there ain't no way out of it, anyhow--for I surely got to be there!”

CHAPTER XVIII

Morehouse did not hear the door in the opaque gla.s.s part.i.tion that walled his desk off from the outer editorial offices open and close, for all that it was very quiet. Ever since the hour which followed the going to press of the afternoon edition of the paper the huge room, with its littered floor and flat-topped tables, had been deserted, so still that the buzzing of a blue-bottle fly against the window pane at Morehouse's side seemed irritatingly loud by contrast.

The plump newspaperman in brown was too deeply preoccupied to hear anything so timidly un.o.btrusive as was that interruption, and only after the intruder had plucked nervously at the elbow that supported his chin did he realize that he was not alone. His head came up then, slowly, until he was gazing back into the eyes of the little, attenuated old man who, head tilted birdlike to one side, was standing beside him in uncomfortable, apologetic silence.

It surprised Morehouse more than a little. For the life of him he couldn't have told just whom he had expected to see when he looked up, but nothing could have startled him more than the presence of that white-haired wisp of a man with the beady eyes who fitted almost uncannily into the perplexing puzzle which had held him there at his desk until dusk. He forgot to greet the newcomer. Instead he sat gazing at him, wide-mouthed, and after Old Jerry had borne the scrutiny as long as he could he took the initiative himself.

”Well, I got here,” he quavered. ”I been a-tryin' to get upstairs to see you ever since about three o'clock, and they wouldn't let me in.