The Horace Chadwicks were breakfasting in their stately old colonial
home in the environs of the city. The shrill song of twittering robins
came through the half-open windows on a gentle spring breeze and the
morning sunlight flooded the room. A benign spirit of peace and domestic
tranquility seemed to brood over the scene. Mr. Chadwick, a solid and
substantial looking man of fifty-five, was supping his coffee and
glancing through the financial columns of the Gazette. Mrs. Chadwick had
finished her grape-fruit and had just picked up the Bulletin. She was a
matronly person whose ample bosom seemed to be but the continuation of a
rippling series of superfluous chins. She carried herself, even in her
morning negligee, with that air of conscious rectitude and commanding
importance which she felt to be fitting for a prominent banker’s wife
who was a member of three important women’s clubs, secretary of the
anti-cigarette section of the local branch of the W. C. T. U.,
vice-president of the Baltimore chapter of the League Opposed to Woman’s
Suffrage and chairman of the Advisory Committee to the State Board of
Moving Picture Censors.
If Mr. Chadwick hadn’t been deeply immersed in the Gazette’s account of
the proposed merger of certain copper interests he might have noticed
gathering storm clouds a few feet away, but he was blissfully
unconscious of any impending catastrophe. Screened by his paper he had
no inkling of the passing train of emotions that were registered upon
the extensive facial areas of the partner of his joys. Amazement,
incredulity, bewilderment, chagrin, unholy rage—all of these feelings
were depicted upon the countenance of Mrs. Chadwick and were succeeded
in turn, by an expression of scornful calm that was pregnant with
possibilities of a most unpleasant nature. She laid down the Bulletin,
removed her glasses and addressed her husband in a voice that was cold
and menacing.
“What car do you propose using Sunday, Horace?” she asked.
“What’s that?”, said Mr. Chadwick looking around his newspaper. “What
car? Sunday? Oh, I guess I’ll take the new touring car out?”
“Don’t you think the limousine would be better?”, she continued in an
even voice. “More sheltered, more screened from the public gaze as it
were?”
“More screened from the public gaze?”, he repeated. “What are you
getting at, Elizabeth? No limousine for me if this weather keeps up.
Wonderful morning, my dear, a wonderful morning. I’ll bet the crocuses
sprouted three inches over night. A few more days like this and I’ll
peel a half dozen years off. Nothing like spring to put life into you,
my dear, nothing like it.”
“Nothing like spring to make foolish nincompoops out of a lot of old
men,” corrected Mrs. Chadwick in a voice that was positively glacial.
Something in the tone of it stirred her husband’s curiosity. He put down
his paper and looked up quickly.
“What are you talking about, Elizabeth?” he inquired sharply.
“I suppose Colonel Roundtree has picked a blonde,” went on Mrs. Chadwick
icily, utterly ignoring his question. “Have you decided on a brunette,
Horace?”
“Blondes—brunettes?” murmured Mr. Chadwick hazily. “Have I decided—say,
Elizabeth, what’s got into you?”
“I dare say brunettes are a little too seriously inclined for you,” ran
on his wife in the same even, ironic tone. “Blondes are livelier and
they have the funniest names, I’m told. Which do you prefer,
Horace—Trixie, Mazie or Delphine?”
Mr. Chadwick surveyed his wife with alarm.
“What’s the joke, Elizabeth?”, he inquired with an attempt at a smile
that was really pathetic. “Where do I laugh?”
“Into her little pink ear, Horace,” responded Mrs. Chadwick.
“Look here, Elizabeth,” he shouted, “either you need a doctor or the air
around here needs clearing. Humor was never your strong forte. There are
a lot of sly little innuendos floating about that I’m going to choke off
right here and now. Some damned old meddler in petticoats has been
buzzing about this house and I’m going to find out who it is.”
Mrs. Chadwick composedly confronted him.
“A pretty well known meddler, Horace,” she remarked with irritating
suavity. “A meddler known to thousands. I refer you to the Bulletin.”
She carelessly indicated the paper in front of her. Mr. Chadwick grabbed
it and hurriedly glanced at the front page. A three column headline
attracted his attention.
ELDERLY MILLIONAIRES
PLAN JOY RIDE PARTY,
WITH “FROLICS” CHORUS
––––
Donald McDonald, Horace Chadwick
and Other Auto Club
Members Arrange to Bring
Broadway Beauties Into Town.
––––
INSIDER SPILLS THE BEANS
––––
By the time Mr. Chadwick got that far he was spluttering like a leaky
radiator valve. By the time he had finished reading through the flossy
little yarn that Billy Crandall had woven out of Jimmy Martin’s story,
he looked as if he had overstayed the time limit in the hot room at a
Turkish bath by fifteen minutes. His face was fiery red and the veins
stood out on his forehead in knotty little lumps.
The fragmentary remarks that Mrs. Chadwick was able to extract from the
almost incoherent jumble of sounds that escaped from the lips of her
spouse during the reading were of such a general nature and tone that
she put her hands to her ears in sheer self-defense and sat wildly
tapping her feet on the floor to drown them out. The next minute her
husband crashed out of the room and through the hall to his waiting car.
“Cut her loose, Martin, and drive me to the Bulletin office,” he shouted
to the trim chauffeur. “I’m going over the top after that crowd of
pestiferous puppies.”
* * * * *
Though it was not quite nine o’clock when Horace Chadwick arrived at the
Bulletin office he found eight other apoplectic prominent citizens
gathered in excited colloquy in the ante-room to the office of Richard
Chilvers, the owner and editor-in-chief of the paper. Col. Hannibal
Roundtree, a handsome and stately old gentleman with a militant imperial
and a flowing white moustache, was addressing remarks to a thoroughly
scared young man who had thoughtlessly confessed a minute before that he
was Mr. Chilver’s secretary.
“You listen to me, young man,” he was saying. “You march into that
office there and get Dick Chilvers on that private wire of his and tell
him that if he’s a gentleman he’ll drop his breakfast and come down heah
and meet a delegation of irate and fightin’ mad citizens of this
community face to face, instead skulkin’ in the trenches.”
The youthful secretary vanished through a swinging door marked “Private”
and Colonel Roundtree turned to his friends.
“Damned, rascally, cowardly hounds—that’s what I call ’em. They print a
dastardly canard like that and then they skedaddle in the face of the
common enemy.”
“You’re talking, colonel,” broke in Mr. Chadwick. “I haven’t met anybody
I know, but I’ll bet we’re the laughing stock of the whole town.”
“I can’t take that bet,” responded Col. Roundtree bitterly.
“Unfortunately for my peace of mind I have met some of my friends. Why,
gentlemen, we should take matters into our own hands, mount a machine
gun right heah at this door and keep ’em from gettin’ out another
edition of this lyin’, treachous, no-account sheet.”
There were murmurs of approval of these belligerent sentiments from the
little group of protestants which had just been increased by the arrival
of Jonathan Wilde, a thin dyspeptic looking man with a disappearing
Adam’s apple and of Henry Quinby Blugsden, a former United States
senator who carried the dignity of America’s foremost debating society
about with him on all occasions.
“Legal measures, my dear colonel,” said the former senator, “are, I
think, the soundest in such an emergency. So far as I am concerned my
suit will be filed this afternoon. I shall name the sum of $250,000 as
insufficient damages for the mental pain I have already undergone. Mrs.
Blugsden, as many of you know, is a woman of decided prejudices and a
strong mind.”
“She hasn’t a shade on my wife,” remarked Mr. Wilde. “She’s got two
doctors working on her this minute. Went right off into hysterics at the
breakfast table and began smashing china.”
“My own deah Julia,” remarked the colonel, “professed not to believe the
damned nonsense, but there was a look in her off eye as I was passin’
out the door that made me feel more uncomfortable than I have since the
day Yellow Boy lost the Eastern Shore Handicap.”
The elevator door out in the corridor clanged just then and the brisk
step of Richard Chilvers was heard approaching the little delegation of
prominent citizens. Colonel Roundtree moved to a strategic position at
the head of the group. The publisher—a tall, forthright, hearty looking
man—stopped at the doorway and affected great surprise at the
combination of wealth, social position and business power he found
confronting him.
“Well, well,” he remarked buoyantly, “the Bulletin seems to be honored
this morning. It can’t be possible that you’re all waiting to see me, is
it?”
Colonel Roundtree lost his voice for a moment at the breezy assurance of
this greeting. He coughed violently and then composed himself with a
mighty effort.
“You know perfectly well why we’re here, Dick Chilvers,” he said
majestically. “We’re here because the honor and the sacred dignity of
our homes and hearths have been ruthlessly assailed in the public
prints.”
The publisher walked toward the door leading to his office. He held it
open.
“Just step inside, gentlemen,” he said quietly. “I never discuss
business out here.”
The prominent citizens moved inside and disposed themselves about the
desk in the centre of the room. Mr. Chilvers, who was irritatingly calm,
laid his hat and gloves on the desk and faced them.
“Won’t you be seated, gentlemen?” he asked suavely.
“Seated! Hell!” retorted Colonel Roundtree. “We want to talk to you
standin’ up. Why did you print that lyin’ yarn this mornin’?”
“I presume you refer to the story about the Automobile Club,” returned
the publisher. “I’m not aware that it is a lying yarn, as you call it.
I’ve been up several hours, colonel, and I’ve been doing a little
investigating on my own.”
There were excited murmurs from the group of protestants at this remark.
Horace Chadwick, who stood next to Colonel Roundtree decided to go to
bat in place of the latter. The colonel was palpably too mad to be
articulate.
“Dick Chilvers,” said Mr. Chadwick, “do you mean to tell your fellow
club members and business associates that you give the slightest
credence to this fairy tale?”
“I mean to tell you,” replied the publisher evenly, “that I have faith
in the men I employ. I didn’t see the story until I read it in the paper
this morning. I must confess it sounded incredible. I got my night city
editor out of bed and he told me that the story had been thoroughly
investigated and verified.”
“Verified?” shouted Colonel Roundtree, finding his voice again. “Who in
the name of Andrew Jackson verified it?”
“A gentleman we all know extremely well,” returned the editor. “I’m
going to call him up.”
He reached for the telephone book on his desk, looked up a number and
gave it to the operator. His visitors gathered around his desk
whispering excitedly to each other. There was a moment or two of tense
silence and then the bell rang.
“Is that 3459 Parkway?” he asked. “Please give me Mr. McDonald.”
As he waited the distinguished citizens looked at each other in
amazement. They moved closer to the telephone. Presently the publisher
was talking again.
“Is that you, Mac?” he asked. “This is Dick Chilvers. You know what I
want to talk to you about, I guess—yes, that’s it—hell?—I should say
so—I’ve got nearly an even dozen irate citizens here now and I’m dead
certain there are more on the way—Roundtree?—yes, he’s here—yes, he’s a
little excited about it——”
An indignant snort from the colonel interrupted the conversation. His
associates nudged him into silence.
“Jennings said you gave Crandall the story,” Chilvers was saying. “You
did, eh?—what’s the idea? Come now, Mac, this is serious—don’t laugh
like that—why if Roundtree ever heard that laugh he’d commit aggravated
assault and battery on the spot—y-e-s—y-e-s—well, of course——”
The little group bent forward eagerly to catch every word. The one-sided
conversation began to get more and more cryptic to them.
“You will, eh,” the publisher continued. “No—not this time. I’ll get
this particular story myself—noon, eh?—all right, Mac.”
Chilvers hung up the phone and turned to his friends.
“Gentlemen,” he remarked easily. “I’m going out on a little assignment
myself. I’m going to interview Mr. Donald McDonald of the Merchants
Trust Company. He says he’s got another story that’s better than this
one. I’ll have to ask you to excuse me until I see him.”
“We’ll meet you at his office,” blurted Colonel Roundtree. “There’s
something powerful queer about this thing and we’re going to see it
through.”
“Mac won’t be at his office,” responded the publisher. “He said he’d
prefer not to meet any of you until tomorrow. We’ve arranged a—well, a
sort of a secret rendezvous.”
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