PROFESSOR GRISWOLD TAKES THE FIELD
Barbara and Griswold stopped at the telegraph office on their way back
to the executive mansion, and were met with news that the sheriff of
Mingo had refused to receive Griswold's message.
"His private lines of communication with the capital are doubtless well
established," said Griswold, "and Bosworth probably warned him, but it
isn't of great importance. It's just as well for Appleweight and his
friends, high and low, to show their hands."
When they were again on the veranda, Griswold lingered for a moment with
no valid excuse for delay beyond the loveliness of the night and his
keen delight in Barbara's voice and her occasional low laughter, which
was so pleasant to hear that he held their talk to a light key, that he
might evoke it the more. Professor Griswold's last flirtation was now so
remote that he would have been hard put to say whether the long-departed
goddess' name had been Evelyn or Laura. He had so thoroughly
surrendered himself to the exactions of the law that love and marriage
held small place in his speculations of the future. He had heard himself
called a bachelor professor with the humorous tolerance of one who is
pretty sure of himself, and who is not yet reduced to the cynical
experiment of peering beneath the top layer of his box of strawberries
to find the false bottom. He recalled the slender manuscript volume of
verses in his desk at home, and he felt that it would be the easiest
thing in the world to write a thousand songs to-night, beside which the
soundest brief ever filed in any court would be the silliest of literary
twaddle.
"You have done all that could be asked of you, Mr. Griswold, and I can
not permit you to remain longer. Father will certainly be here
to-morrow. I assure you that it is not like him to avoid his public
obligations. His absence is the most unaccountable thing that ever
happened. I have my difficulties here at home, for since my mother's
death I have had the care of my young sisters, and it is not pleasant to
have to deceive them."
"Oh, but your father isn't absent! He is officially present and in the
saddle," laughed Griswold. "You must not admit, even to me, that he is
not here in full charge of his office. And as for my leaving the field,
I have not the slightest intention of going back to Virginia until the
Appleweight ghost is laid, the governor of North Carolina brought to
confusion, and the governor of South Carolina visibly present and
thundering his edicts again, so to speak, _ex cathedra_. My own affairs
can wait, Miss Osborne. My university may go hang; my clients may be
mulcted in direst damages, but just now I am your humble servant, and I
shall not leave your service until my tasks are finished. I am
consulting not my duty, but my pleasure. The joy of having a hand in a
little affair like this, and of being able to tell my friend Tommy
Ardmore about it afterward, would be sufficient. Ardmore will never
speak to me again for not inviting him to a share in the game."
He was more buoyant than she had seen him, and she liked the note of
affection that crept into his tone as he spoke of his friend.
"Ardmore is the most remarkable person alive," Griswold continued. "You
remember--I spoke of him this morning. He likes to play the inscrutable
idiot, and he carries it off pretty well; but underneath he's really
clever. The most amazing ideas take hold of him. You never could imagine
what he's doing now! I met him accidentally in Atlanta the other day,
and he was in pursuit of a face--a girl's face that he had seen from a
car window for only an instant on a siding somewhere."
"He must have a romantic temperament," suggested Barbara.
"Quite that. His family have been trying to marry him off to some one in
their own set ever since I have known him, but he's extremely difficult.
One of the most remarkable things about him is his amazing democracy. He
owns a palace on Fifth Avenue, but rarely occupies it, for he says it
bores him. He has a camp in the Adirondacks, but I have never known him
to visit it. His place in North Carolina pleases him because there he
commands space, and no one can crowd him or introduce him to people he
doesn't want to meet. He declares that the most interesting people don't
have more than a dollar a day to spend; that the most intelligent and
the best-looking girls in America clerk in shops and work in factories.
A philanthropic lady in New York supplies him every Christmas with a
list of names of laundry girls, who seem to appeal particularly to
Ardy's compassion, though he never knew one in his life, but he admires
them for the zeal with which they destroy buttonholes and develop the
deckle-edge cuff; and he has twenty-dollar bills mailed to them quite
mysteriously, and without any hint of who Santa Claus really is."
"But the girl he saw from the car window--did she also appeal to him
altruistically?"
"No; it was with her eye. He declared to me most solemnly that the girl
winked at him!"
Griswold was aware that Miss Osborne's interest in Ardmore cooled
perceptibly.
"Oh!" she said, with that delightful intonation with which a woman
utterly extinguishes a sister.
"I shouldn't have told you that," said Griswold, guiltily aware of
falling temperature. "He is capable of following a winking eye at a
perfectly respectful distance for a hundred years, and of being
entertained all the time by the joy of pursuit."
"It seems very unusual," said Barbara, with cold finality.
Griswold remembered this talk as, the next day, aboard the train bound
for Turner Court House, the seat of Mingo County, South Carolina, he
pondered a telegram he had received from Ardmore. He read and re-read
this message, chewing cigars and scowling at the landscape, and the
cause of his perturbation of spirit may be roughly summarized in these
words:
On leaving the executive mansion the night before, he had studied maps
in his room at the Saluda House, and carefully planned his campaign. He
had talked by telephone with the prosecuting attorney of Mingo County,
and found that official politely responsive. So much had gone well. Then
the juxtaposition of Ardmore's estate to the border, and the possible
use of the house as headquarters, struck in upon him. He would, after
all, generously take Ardmore into the game, and they would uphold the
honor and dignity of the great commonwealth of South Carolina together.
The keys of all Ardmore's houses were, so to speak, in Griswold's
pocket, and invitations were unnecessary between them; yet, at Atlanta
Ardmore had made a point of asking Griswold down to help while away the
tedium of Mrs. Atchison's house party, and as a matter of form Griswold
had wired from Columbia, advising Ardmore of his unexpected descent.
Even in case Ardmore should still be abroad in pursuit of the winking
eye, the doors of the huge house would be open to Griswold, who had
entered there so often as the owner's familiar friend. These things he
pondered deeply as he read and re-read Ardmore's reply to his message, a
reply which was plainly enough dated at Ardsley, but which, he could
not know, had really been written in caboose 0186 as it lay on a siding
in the southeastern yards at Raleigh, and thence despatched to the
manager at Ardsley, with instructions to forward it as a new message to
Griswold at Columbia. The chilling words thus flung at him were:
Professor Henry Maine Griswold,
Saluda House, Columbia, S. C.:
I am very sorry, old man, but I can not take you in just now.
Scarlet fever is epidemic among my tenants, and I could not think
of exposing you to danger. As soon as the accursed plague passes I
want to have you down.
ARDMORE.
An epidemic that closed the gates of Ardsley would assume the
proportions of a national disaster; for even if the great house itself
were quarantined, there were lodges and bungalows scattered over the
domain, where a host of guests could be entertained in comfort. Griswold
reflected that the very fact that he had wired from Columbia must have
intimated to Ardmore that his friend was flying toward him, pursuant to
the Atlanta invitation. Griswold dismissed a thousand speculations as
unworthy. Ardmore had never shown the remotest trace of snobbishness,
and as far as the threatened house party was concerned, Griswold knew
Mrs. Atchison very well, and had been entertained at her New York house.
The patronizing tone of the thing caused Griswold to flush at every
reading. If the Ardsley date-line had not been so plainly written; if
the phraseology were not so characteristic, there might be room for
doubt; but Ardmore--Ardmore, of all men, had slapped him in the face!
But, scarlet fever or no scarlet fever, the pursuit of Appleweight had
precedence of private grievances. By the time he reached Turner Court
House Griswold had dismissed the ungraciousness of Ardmore, and his jaws
were set with a determination to perform the mission intrusted to him by
Barbara Osborne, and to wait until later for an accounting with his
unaccountable friend.
Arrived at Turner's, Griswold strode at once toward the court house. The
contemptuous rejection of his message by the sheriff of Mingo had
angered Griswold, but he was destined to feel even more poignant
insolence when, entering the sheriff's office, a deputy, languidly posed
as a letter "V" in a swivel-chair, with his feet on the mantel, took a
cob pipe from his mouth and lazily answered Griswold's importunate query
with:
"The sheriff ain't hyeh, seh. He's a-visitin' his folks in Tennessy."
"When will he be back?" demanded Griswold, hot of heart, but maintaining
the icy tone that had made him so formidable in cross-examination.
"I reckon I don't know, seh."
"Do you know your own name?" persisted Griswold sweetly.
"Go to hell, seh," replied the deputy. He reached for a match, relighted
his pipe, and carefully crossed his feet on the mantel-shelf. The moment
Griswold's steps died away in the outer corridor the deputy rose and
busied himself so industriously with the telephone that within an hour
all through the Mingo hills, and even beyond the state line, along
lonely trails, across hills and through valleys, and beside cheery
creeks and brooks, it was known that a strange man from Columbia was in
Mingo County looking for the sheriff, and Appleweight, _alias_ Poteet,
and his men were everywhere on guard.
Griswold liked the prosecuting attorney on sight. His name was
Habersham, and he was a youngster with a clear and steady gray eye.
Instead of the Southern statesman's flowing prince albert, he wore a
sack-coat of gray jeans, and was otherwise distinguished by a shirt of
white and blue check. He grinned as Griswold bent a puzzled look upon
him.
"I took your courses at the university two years ago, Professor, and I
remember distinctly that you always wore a red cravat to your Wednesday
lectures."
"You have done well," replied Griswold, "for I never expected to find an
old student who remembered half as much of me as that. Now, as I
understood you over the telephone, Appleweight was indicted for stealing
a ham in this county by the last grand jury, but the sheriff has failed
or refused to make the arrest. How did the grand jury come to indict if
this outlaw dominates all the hill country?"
"The grand jury wanted to make a showing of virtue, and it was, of
course, understood between the foreman, the leader of the gang, and the
sheriff that no warrant could be served on Appleweight. I did my duty;
the grand jury's act was exemplary; and there the wheels of justice are
blocked. The same thing is practically true across the state line in
Dilwell County, North Carolina. These men, led by Appleweight, use their
intimate knowledge of the country to elude pursuers when at times the
revenue men undertake a raid, and the county authorities have never
seriously molested them. Now and then one of these sheriffs will make a
feint of going out to look for Appleweight, but you may be sure that due
notice is given before he starts. Three revenue officers have lately
been killed while looking for these men, and the government is likely to
take vigorous action before long."
"We may as well be frank," said Griswold in his most professional voice.
"I don't want the federal authorities to take these men; it is important
that they should not do so. This is an affair between the governors of
the two Carolinas. It has been said that neither of them dares press the
matter of arrest, but I am here in Governor Osborne's behalf to give the
lie to that imputation."
"That has undoubtedly been the fact, as you know," and Habersham smiled
at his old preceptor inquiringly. "Osborne once represented the
Appleweights, and he undoubtedly saved the leader from the gallows. That
was before Osborne ever thought of becoming governor, and he acted only
within his proper rights as a lawyer. I don't recall that anything in
professional ethics requires us to abandon a client because we know he's
guilty. If such were the case we'd all starve to death."
"Governor Osborne has been viciously maligned," declared Griswold.
"While he did at one time represent these people--no doubt thoroughly
and efficiently--he holds the loftiest ideal of public service, and it
was only when his official integrity was brought into question by
unscrupulous enemies that he employed me as special counsel to carry
this affair through to a conclusion. That accounts for my presence here,
Habersham, and, with your assistance, I propose to force Governor
Dangerfield's hand. Suppose all these people were arrested in Mingo
County under these indictments, what would be the result--trial and
acquittal?"
"Just that, in spite of any effort made to convict them."
"Well, Governor Osborne is tired of this business and wants the
Appleweight scandal disposed of once and for all."
"That's strange," remarked Habersham, clearly surprised at Griswold's
vigorous tone. "I called on the governor in his office at Columbia only
ten days ago, and he put me off. He said he had to prepare an address to
deliver before the South Carolina Political Reform Association, and he
couldn't take up the Appleweight case; and I called on Bosworth, the
attorney-general, and he grew furiously angry, and said I was guilty of
the gravest malfeasance in not having brought those men to book long
ago. When I suggested that he connive with the governor toward removing
our sheriff, he declared that the governor was a coward. He seemed
anxious to put the governor in a hole, though why he should take that
attitude I can't make out, as it has been generally understood that
Governor Osborne's personal friendliness for him secured his nomination
and election to the attorney-generalship, and I have heard that he is
engaged to the governor's oldest daughter."
"He is a contemptible hound," replied Griswold with feeling, "and at the
proper time we shall deal with him; but it is of more importance just
now to make Appleweight a prisoner in North Carolina. If he's arrested
over there, that lets us out; and if the North Carolina authorities
won't arrest their own criminals we'll go over into Dilwell County and
show them how to be good. The man's got to be locked up, and he'd look
much better in a North Carolina jail, under all the circumstances."
"That's good in theory, but how do you justify it in law?"
"Oh, that's the merest matter of formulæ! My dear Habersham, all the
usual processes of law go down before emergencies!"
The airiness of Griswold's tone caused the prosecutor to laugh, for this
was not the sober associate professor of admiralty whose lectures he had
sat under at the University of Virginia, but a different person, whose
new attitude toward the law and its enforcement shocked him
immeasurably.
"You seem to be going in for pretty loose interpretations, and if that
plaster bust of John Marshall up there falls from the shelf, you need
not be surprised," and Habersham still laughed. "I might be impudent and
cite you against yourself!"
"That would constitute contempt of court, and I can not just now spare
your services long enough for you to serve a jail sentence. Go on now,
and tell me what you have done and what you propose."
"Well, as I told you over the telephone, we hear a great deal about
Appleweight and his crowd, but we never hear much of their enemies, who
are, nevertheless, of the same general stock, and equally determined
when aroused. Ten of these men I have quietly called to meet at my farm
out here a few miles from town, on Thursday night. They come from
different points over the country, and we'll have a small but grim
posse that will be ready for business. You may not know it, but the
Appleweights are most religious. Appleweight himself boasts that he
never misses church on Sunday. He goes also to the mid-week service on
Thursday night, so I have learned, and thereby hangs our opportunity.
Mount Nebo Church lies off here toward the north. It's a lonely point in
itself, though it's the spiritual center and rendezvous for a wide area.
If Appleweight can be taken at all, that's the place, and I'm willing to
make the trial. Whether to stampede the church and make a fight, or
seize him alone as he approaches the place, is a question for discussion
with the boys I have engaged to go into the game. How does it strike
you?"
"First rate. Ten good men ought to be enough; but if it comes down to
numbers, the state militia can be brought into use. The South Carolina
National Guard is in camp, and we can have a regiment quick enough, if I
ask it."
Habersham whistled.
"Osborne is certainly up and doing!" he exclaimed, chuckling. "I suppose
he has tossed a quarter, and decided it's better to be good than to be
senator. By the way, that was a curious story in the newspapers about
Dangerfield and Osborne having a row at New Orleans. I wonder just what
passed between them?"
Griswold was conscious that Habersham glanced at him a little curiously,
with a look that implied something that half formed itself on the
prosecuting attorney's lips.
"I know nothing beyond what I read in the newspapers at the time. Some
political row, I fancy."
"I suppose Governor Osborne hasn't discussed it with you since his
return to Columbia?" asked Habersham carelessly. The shadow of a smile
flitted across his face but vanished quickly as though before a
returning consciousness of the fact that he was facing Henry Maine
Griswold, who was first of all a gentleman, and not less a scholar and a
man of the world, who was not to be trifled with.
"No," replied Griswold, a little shortly. "I was appealed to in rather
an unusual way in this matter of Appleweight. It is quite out of my line
as a legal proposition, but there are other considerations of which I
may not speak."
"Pardon me," murmured Habersham; but he asked: "What was Governor
Osborne doing when you left Columbia?"
"When I left Columbia," remarked Griswold, and it was he that smiled
now, "to the best of my knowledge and belief the governor of South
Carolina was deeply absorbed in knitting a necktie, the color of which
was, I think, the orange of a Blue Ridge autumn sunset. And now, if you
will kindly give me pen and paper, I will communicate the Appleweight
situation and our prospects to my honored chief."