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The Big-Town Round-Up, a fiction by William MacLeod Raine |
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Chapter 29. Bad News |
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_ CHAPTER XXIX. BAD NEWS Colin Whitford came into the room carrying a morning paper. His step was hurried, his eyes eager. When he spoke there was the lift of excitement in his voice. "Bee, I've got bad news." "Is the Bird Cage flooded?" asked Beatrice. "Or have the miners called a strike again?" "Worse than that. Lindsay's been arrested. For murder." The bottom fell out of her heart. She caught at the corner of a desk to steady herself. "Murder! It can't be! Must be some one of the same name." "I reckon not, honey. It's Clay sure enough. Listen." He read the headlines of a front-page story. "It can't be Clay! What would he be doing in a gambling-dive?" She reached for the paper, but when she had it the lines blurred before her eyes. "Read it, please." Whitford read the story to the last line. Long before he had finished, his daughter knew the one arrested was Clay. She sat down heavily, all the life stricken from her young body. "It's that man Durand. He's done this and fastened it on Clay. We'll find a way to prove Clay didn't do it." "Maybe, in self-defense--" Beatrice pushed back her father's hesitant suggestion, and even while she did it a wave of dread swept over her. The dead man was the same criminal "Slim" Jim Collins whom the cattleman had threatened in order to protect the Millikan girl. The facts that the man had been struck down by a chair and that her friend claimed, according to the paper, that the gunman had fired two shots, buttressed the solution offered by Whitford. But the horror of it was too strong for her. Against reason her soul protested that Clay could not have killed a man. It was too horrible, too ghastly, that through the faults of others he should be put in such a situation. And why should her friend be in such a place unless he had been trapped by the enemies who were determined to ruin him? She knew he had a contempt for men who wasted their energies in futile dissipations. He was too clean, too much a son of the wind-swept desert, to care anything about the low pleasures of indecent and furtive vice. He was the last man she knew likely to be found enjoying a den of this sort. "Dad, I'm going to him," she announced with crisp decision. Her father offered no protest. His impulse, too, was to stand by the friend in need. He had no doubt Clay had killed the man, but he had a sure conviction it had been done in self-defense. "We'll get the best lawyers in New York for him, honey," he said. "Nobody will slip anything over on Lindsay if we can help it." "Will they let us see him? Or shall we have to get permission from some one?" "We'll have to get an order. I know the district attorney. He'll do what he can for me, but maybe it'll take time." Beatrice rose, strong again and resilient. Her voice was vibrant with confidence. "Then after you've called up the district attorney, we'll drive to Clay's flat in Harlem and find out from Johnnie what he can tell us. Perhaps he knows what Clay was doing in that place they raided." It was not necessary to go to the Runt. He came to them. As Beatrice and her father stepped into the car Johnnie and Kitty appeared round the corner. Both of them had the news of a catastrophe written on their faces. A very little encouragement and they would be in tears. "Ain't it tur'ble, Miss Beatrice? They done got Clay at last. After he made 'em all look like plugged nickels they done fixed it so he'll mebbe go to the electric chair and--" "Stop that nonsense, Johnnie," ordered Miss Whitford sharply, a pain stabbing her heart at his words. "Don't begin whining already. We've got to see him through. Buck up and tell me what you know." "That's right, Johnnie,"' added the mining man. "You and Kitty quit looking like the Atlantic Ocean in distress. We've got to endure the grief and get busy. We'll get Lindsay out of this hole all right." "You're dawg-goned whistlin'. Y'betcha, by jollies!" agreed the Runt, immensely cheered by Whitford's confidence. "We been drug into this an' we'll sure hop to it." "When did you see Clay last? How did he come to be in that gambling-house? Did he say anything to you about going there?" The girl's questions tumbled over each other in her hurry. "Well, ma'am, it must 'a' been about nine o'clock that Clay he left last night. I recollect because--" "It doesn't matter why. Where was he going?" "To meet Mr. Bromfield at his club," said Kitty. "Mr. Bromfield!" cried Beatrice, surprised. "Are you sure?" "Tha's what Clay said," corroborated the husband. "Mr. Bromfield invited him. We both noticed it because it seemed kinda funny, him and Clay not bein'--" "Johnnie," his wife reproved, mindful of the relationship between this young woman and the clubman. "Did he say which club?" "Seems to me he didn't, not as I remember. How about that, Kitty?" "No, I'm sure he didn't. He said he wouldn't be back early. So we went to bed. We s'posed after we got up this mo'nin' he was sleepin' in his room till the paper come and I looked at it." Johnnie gave way to lament. "I told him awhile ago we had orto go back to Arizona or they'd git him. And now they've gone and done it sure enough." Keen as a hawk on the hunt, Beatrice turned to her father quickly. "I'm going to get Clarendon on the 'phone. He'll know all about it." "Why will he know all about it?" "Because he was with Clay. He's the man the paper says the police are looking for--the man with Clay when it happened." Her father's eyes lit. "That's good guessing, Bee." It was her fiance's man who answered the girl's call. She learned that Clarendon was still in his room. "He's quite sick this morning, Miss," the valet added. "Tell him I want to talk with him. It's important." "I don't think, Miss, that he's able--" "Will you please tell him what I say?" Presently the voice of Bromfield, thin and worried, came to her over the wire. "I'm ill, Bee. Absolutely done up. I--I can't talk." "Tell me about Clay Lindsay. Were you with him when--when it happened?" There was a perceptible pause before the answer came. "With him?" She could feel his terror throbbing over the wire. Though she could not see him, she knew her question had stricken him white. "With him where?" "At this gambling-house--Maddock's?" "No, I--I--Bee, I tell you I'm ill." "He went out last night to join you at your club. I know that. When did you see him last?" "I--we didn't--he didn't come." "Then didn't you see him at all?" There was another pause, significant and telling, followed by a quavering "No-o." "Clary, I want to see you--right away." "I'm ill, I tell you--can't leave my bed." He gave a groan too genuine to doubt. Beatrice hung up the receiver. Her eyes sparked. For all her slimness, she looked both competent and dangerous. "What does he say?" her father asked. "Says he didn't meet Clay at all--that he didn't show up. Dad, there's something wrong about it. Clary's in a panic about something. I'm going to see him, no matter whether he can leave his room or not." Whitford looked dubious. "I don't see--" "Well, I do," his daughter cut him off decisively. "We're going to his rooms--now. Why not? He says he's ill. All right. I'm engaged to be married to him and I've a right to see how ill he is." "What's in your noodle, honey? You've got some kind of a suspicion. What is it?" "I think Clary knows something. My notion is that he was at Maddock's and that he's in a blue funk for fear he'll be found and named as an accessory. I'm going to find out all he can tell me." "But--" She looked at her father directly, a deep meaning in the lovely eyes. A little tremor ran through her body. "Dad, I'm going to save Clay. That's the only thing that counts." Her words were an appeal, a challenge. They told him that her heart belonged to the friend in prison, and they carried him back somehow to the hour when the nurse first laid her, a tiny baby, in his arms. His heart was very tender to her. "Whatever you say, sweetheart." _ |
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