JACK ASHLEY, JOURNALIST.
A loud pounding on the door of his room in the tavern at South Ashfield
awakens Mr. Jack Ashley from a dream of piscatorial conquest.
“Four o’clock!” announces the disturber of his slumbers, with a parting
thump. Ashley rolls out of bed and plunges his face into a brimming bowl
of spring water.
It is early dawn. A cool breeze, laden with the scent of apple blossoms,
drifts through the window.
“God made the country and man made the town,” quotes the young man, as
he descends to the hotel office.
“Ain’t used to gittin’ up at this hour, be ye?” grins the proprietary
genius of the tavern.
“The habit, worthy host, has not fastened upon me seriously. This is
usually my hour for going to bed. Hast aught to eat?”
“Breakfas’ all ready,” with a nod toward what is known as the
dining-room.
Ashley shudders as he gazes at the spread. It is the usual Vermont
breakfast—weak coffee, two kinds of pie on one plate, and a tier of
doughnuts.
“Gad! This country is a howling wilderness of pie!” he mutters,
surveying the repast in comical despair. “And to flash it on a man at 4
a.m.! It is simply barbarous!”
During his short vacation sojourn Mr. Ashley’s epicurean tastes have
suffered a number of distinct shocks. But the ozone of the Green
Mountains has contributed toward the generation of an appetite that
needs little tempting to expend its energies. He makes a hearty
breakfast on this particular morning, drowns the memories of the menu in
a bowl of milk, and announces to Landlord Howe that he is ready to be
directed to the best trout brook in central Vermont.
Mr. Howe surveys the eight-ounce bamboo with mild disdain. “Them fancy
rigs ain’t much good on our brooks,” he declares. “Ketch more with a
75-cent rod.”
“I am rather inclined to agree with you on that point, most genial
boniface; but it’s the only rod I happen to have with me, and I expect
to return with some fish unless the myriad denizens of the brook which
you enthusiastically described last night exist only in your
imagination. By the way, what do you think of the bait?” passing over a
flask.
Mr. Howe’s faded blue eyes moisten and a kindly smile plays over a
countenance browned by many summers in the hay field.
“Didn’t buy that in Vermont,” he ventures.
“Hardly. I’m not lined with asbestos.”
The landlord grins. It is a habit he has.
“I keeps a little suthin’ on hand myself,” he confides in a cautious
undertone, although only the cattle are listening. “But fact is, there
ain’t no use er keepin’ better’n dollar’n a half a gallon liquor. The
boys want suthin’ that’ll scratch when it goes down. Now that, I opine,”
with an affectionate glance at the flask which Ashley files away for
future reference, “must a cost nigh onter $3 a gallon.”
“As much as that,” smiles Ashley. “That, most appreciative of bonifaces,
is the best whisky to be found on Fulton street, New York. Well, I must
be ‘driving along.’ Where’s this wonderful brook of yours?”
“Follow that road round through the barnyard and ‘cross the basin to the
woods. Good fishin’ for four miles. And mind,” as Ashley saunters away,
“don’t bring back any trouts that ain’t six inches long, or the fish
warden will light on ye.”
“Thanks. If I should run across the warden—” and Ashley holds up the
flask.
“That’d fetch him, I reckon,” chuckles Mr. Howe. Ashley vaults over the
bars and strides across the meadows.
Ashley is in high feather. “This air rather discounts an absinthe frappe
for stimulative purposes,” he soliloquizes. “Ah, here’s the wood,
there’s the brook, and if I mistake not, yonder pool hides a whopper
just aching for a go at the early worm.” But it doesn’t and Ashley
enters the forest.
The farther he plunges into the spice-laden wilderness the more is he
enchanted with his surroundings. Picture a cleft in the mountain whose
sides drop almost sheer to a gorge barely wide enough to accommodate a
wood road and a brook that parallels and often encroaches upon it. Tall
pines interlace and shut out the direct rays of the sun and every now
and then a cascade comes tumbling somewhere aloft and plunges into a
broad, pebble-lined basin.
As Ashley sits by one of these pools, his wading boots plunged deep in
the crystal liquid, and pulls lazily on a briar pipe, the reader is
offered the opportunity of becoming better acquainted with him.
He is a prepossessing young fellow of something like 27, medium height
and rather well built. Blue eyes and an aggressive nose, on which
gold-bowed eyeglasses are airily perched, are characteristics of a face
which has always been a passport for its owner into all society worth
cultivating. A well-shaped head is adorned with a profusion of blond
curls, supplemented by a mustache of silken texture and golden hue,
which its possessor is fond of twisting when he is in a blithesome
humor, which is often, and of tugging at savagely when in a reflective
mood, which is infrequent.
Ashley is noted among his friends for chronic good humor and unbounded
confidence in his own abilities. He is one of the brightest all-round
writers on the New York Hemisphere, and he knows it. The best of it is,
City Editor Ricker also knows it. All the office sings of his exploits
and “beats” and does their author reverence. Jack always calls himself a
newspaper man. That is the sensible title. Yet he might wear the name of
journalist much more worthily.
Ashley is in Vermont for his health. Five years of continuous hustling
on a big New York daily has necessitated a breathing spell. He was
telling Mr. Ricker that his “wheels were all run down and needed
repairing,” and that he believed he would take his vacation early this
year.
“I’ll tell you where you want to go,” volunteered the city editor, who
was “raised” among the Green Mountains and served his apprenticeship
gathering locals on a Burlington weekly.
“All right; let’s have it.”
“Take three weeks off and go up into Vermont.”
“Vermont—Vermont—where’s Vermont? O, yes, that green daub on the map of
New England. Railroad run through there?”
“Now, see here, Jack,” retorted Ricker, “you’re not so confoundedly
ignorant as you imply. That’s the trouble with you New Yorkers who were
born and bred here. You consider everything above the Harlem River a jay
community. You’re a sight more provincial than half the inhabitants of
rural New England.”
Jack laughed. “Come to think of it, you hailed from there.”
“Yes, and it’s a mighty good State to hail from. Now, you run up to
Raymond—it’s a little town about in the Y of the Green Mountain range.
You’ll not have Broadway, with its theaters, and restaurants, and bars,
but you’ll get a big room, with a clean, airy bed to sleep in—none of
your narrow hall-chamber cots—and good, plain, wholesome food to eat.
Those necessities of life which Vermont does not supply, good tobacco
and good whisky, you can take with you. You’ll come back feeling like a
fighting cock.” And before his chief finished painting the attractions
of the Green Mountain State, with incidental references to John Stark
and Ethan Allen, Ashley was willing to compromise and two days later
found him en route for Raymond.
Jack fishes the brook as he does everything else—without any waste of
mental or physical exertion.
Landlord Howe did not deceive him. It is an excellent trout brook, and
by the time the sun is well up he has acquired a well-filled creel. He
is sauntering along to what he has decided shall be the last pool, when,
as he turns a bend in the road, he runs upon a man lying beside the
path, with one arm shading his face and clutching in the other hand a
package.
“Hello!” sings out Ashley, stopping short in surprise. The man arises
and passes his hand over his eyes in bewilderment.
“Off the main road, aren’t you?” queries Ashley. The stranger makes no
reply. He bestows upon Ashley a single searching glance and hurries down
the road in the direction of the village.
“He’ll be likely to know me again,” is Jack’s comment. “Gad! What eyes!
They went through me like a stiletto. What the deuce is he prowling
around here for at this time o’ day? He isn’t a fisherman and he can’t
be farming it with those store clothes on. Well, here goes for the last
trout.”
The last trout is not forthcoming, however, so the fisherman unjoints
his rod, reloads and fires his pipe and strolls slowly back to the
hotel. Landlord Howe sees him as he comes swinging across the basin and
waits with some impatience until the young man gets within hailing
distance, when he informs him dramatically:
“Big murder at Raymond last night.”
“How big?” asks Ashley, with lazy interest. Murders are frequent
episodes in his line of business.
Well, it is the largest affair that Mr. Howe has known of “round these
parts since dad was a kid.” Roger Hathaway, cashier of the Raymond
National bank, has been found murdered and the bank robbed of a large
sum of money, and there is no clew to the murderer. The details of the
tragedy have come over the telephone wires early this morning, and the
whole county is in a fever of excitement.
“No clew?” muses Ashley, and his interest in the affair grows. Then he
thinks of the man he encountered on the brook an hour ago. “Seen any
strangers around here?” he inquires of Mr. Howe.
“No one ’cept you,” replies that worthy, contributing a broad grin.
“Oh, but I can prove an alibi,” laughs Jack. “I came down from Raymond
on the early evening train, and everyone was alive in the town then, I
guess. Are the police of this village on the lookout?”
“Well, rather. The local deputy sheriff is on the alert as never before
in his life.”
“It is not impossible that my early morning friend on the brook was
mixed up in last night’s affair,” thinks Ashley. But he says nothing of
the meeting. What is the use? If the unknown was fleeing he must be
pretty well into the next county by this time. But in what direction?
The Raymond murder is the one topic of the day at South Ashfield. The
villagers are gathered in force about the hotel veranda and Ashley
fancies that they regard him a trifle askance as he hunts up a chair and
kills an hour while waiting for the up-train, in listening to the rural
persiflage of the group and the ingenious theories of the local oracle.
“At what time did the killing occur?” he inquires of one of the
loungers. Somewhere around 8 o’clock the night before, he is informed.
“And no clew to the murderer,” he meditates. “Now, if this was New York
I’d take hold of the affair and work it for all it was worth.”
He little dreams what effect the “affair” is to have on his future. Yet
as the train bears him to Raymond the instinct of the newspaper man
tells him that it is a cast possessing phases of peculiar interest. And
he is not wholly unprepared for the telegram that is thrust into his
hands when he leaves the train.
“One of the disadvantages of telling your paper where you intend
spending your vacation,” he remarks as he glances at the dispatch. Then
to the telegraph operator: “I’ll have a story for you after supper.”
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