"There was a paper in Chicago so bad you'd think I was lying if I
tried to describe it to you. And all the books seemed to be concerned
with four-letter words."
He carefully put a piece of ham between the broken halves of the roll.
"Even Bobbie Burns? From what my mother told me he was quite a lad."
"He was dead before your mother was born," Mrs. Klein said. "All the
good ones were, all the ones who tried to entertain instead of shock
or corrupt."
Martha said lightly, "Mama's an admirer of Senator Arnold, the way it
sounds."
"I'll thank you not to mention his name while I'm eating," Mrs. Klein
said acidly. "And I'm not forgetting why _he_ hated the printed word.
But that's looking a gift horse in the mouth."
Doak sipped his coffee. His voice was casual. "Why did he hate the
printed word?"
"He couldn't read anything but the simplest words. The tutors his
father hired and fired to get some learning into that man! He was just
hopeless, that's all."
Doak smiled. "Well, he seems to have done all right without it. I'd
like to have his money."
"And his brain?" Martha asked.
"Just his money," Doak said. "And maybe I'll get some of it before I
give up on him."
He happened to glance at Martha after he finished saying that. Her
face was coldly skeptical and he had an uncomfortable feeling that his
lie hadn't registered with her at all.
In his room, as he undressed, as he hung his clothes in the small
closet, he felt the folded thickness of the dupligraphed magazine in
his jacket pocket.
What more did he need? Tomorrow he'd take the first train back to
Milwaukee and the first plane from Milwaukee. Here was evidence and he
realized now it wasn't something he would be wise to tackle alone. A
few weeks' work by a half dozen operatives and the entire
publisher-reader organization would be spotted and ready for one
unified move.
Local authorities were subject to local loyalties and one leak could
scare off the whole organization. He could be back in Washington
before noon, which would give him a full day and a half of free time,
of June time. To say nothing of the nights.
Why should he hang around this whistle stop for a wasted week-end,
holding kitchen conversations with the unmighty living?
But that Martha, that lovely, that proud and knowing gal.... The
crickets helped him to Dreamland.
The morning sun was bright on the quilted bedspread when he opened his
eyes. There was no sound of meal preparation in the house, no
dialogue. Was it early?
It was ten o'clock. Not since he was a child had he enjoyed as long
and satisfying a sleep as this.
When he came out of the bathroom Mrs. Klein was in the hall. "About
five minutes?" she asked.
"Make it two," he told her and winked. "I'm starving."
Martha had already gone to work. Doak sat down alone to popovers and
oatmeal, eggs and Canadian bacon. And real coffee. He had an almost
animal sense of well being. His decision to go back to Washington,
which had seemed so final last night, was fading under the Dubbinville
spell.
After breakfast he walked down to the station and inquired about
Milwaukee-bound trains.
"There's one due at noon," the agent told him. "Stops on signal. You
want me to stop it?"
"That's kind of early," Doak said. "When's the next?"
"At six tonight. A local. Doesn't need a signal."
That would be soon enough. Doak left and walked slowly up the main
street of Dubbinville. He was walking past the bank when the beard
caught his gaze.
* * * * *
It was the Burns quoter of last night. He was sitting behind the
biggest desk in the open portion of the bank, and there was a sign on
his desk.
The sign read, _Malcolm S. Sutherland--President_.
Lordy, Lordy, Lordy--the president of the bank! That showed the strata
this subversion was reaching. Didn't the man realize what a risk he
was taking?
In the drugstore he saw another of the faces he had seen last night.
It was the man who had administered the hypodermic. He was talking to
the druggist. Doak turned and went in.
"All right, Doctor," the druggist said. "I'll have it about one
o'clock. Will that be all right?"
"Fine," the doctor said. He went out.
Doak bought a package of cigarettes. "Was that Doctor Ryan by any
chance?"
"No. Doctor Helgeson. I don't recall a Doctor Ryan. Doctor Helgeson's
the only medical doctor in town."
"This Ryan's a Ph.D." Doak said. "Senator Arnold told me about him.
Beautiful day, isn't it?"
"Beautiful," the druggist agreed.
Walking back to the house Doak wondered if this couldn't be handled
without punitive measures being taken. The only doctor in town and the
president of the bank--and they were probably only a small part of the
picture. It could disrupt this town if Senator Arnold had his way.
And what was their crime? Reading. A law as stupid as the ancient
prohibition law had been, pushed through a bewildered Congress under
much the same conditions. Supported by a strange blend of the divine
and ridiculous, the naive and the clever, the gullible and the
knowing.
Well, was it his business? _He_ didn't make the laws--he only helped
to enforce them. It was a logical answer and why didn't it satisfy
him?
He had a job, a good job at the public trough in a woman-heavy city, a
security that was as solid as his country. Why should he fret over a
gang of law-breakers? Unless it was that cow-town cutie, that Martha.
Unless he was so dame-happy he'd sell out the Department. That corrupt
he certainly wasn't--at least, not yet.
And they weren't readers anyway--they were publishers. He had almost
forgotten that. Inciters to violence, instigators of strife, polluters
of the mind ... Good Lord, he was beginning to sound like
crack-brained ex-Senator Arnold!
V
Mrs. Klein was shaking out a rug on the front porch. She smiled at
him. "Not much to do here, for a city man, is there?"
"I'm not bored," he said, "for some reason. You have a beautiful
daughter, Mrs. Klein."
"I'd feel happier about her looks if she'd marry somebody," Mrs. Klein
said dryly. "Seems to me they're wasted this way."
Doak sat on the glider. What was it someone had said about marriage?
Oh, yes--that it combined the ultimate in temptation with the ultimate
in opportunity.
He said, "I'm surprised she isn't married. The men around here must be
blind or mute."
"Oh, she's had enough offers," Mrs. Klein answered. She laid the rug
over the porch railing. "But she's a fussy stubborn girl." She sat in
her chair. "You a married man, Mr. Parker?"
He shook his head. "Never had the time nor the money--and besides they
all said no to me."
"I'll bet. With that hair of yours and that fine head, with those
eyes, I'll _bet_ they said no."
"Why, thank you!" Doak said. "You have a number of good points,
yourself, Mrs. Klein."
"My popovers and my coffee, maybe," she agreed. "And my figure wasn't
bad, a decade or two back. But I never had Martha's looks. That's from
her dad's side of the family."
"Handsome, were they?"
"Oh, yes. High falutin' people, scholars and beauties who owned half
the land in the county, at one time. Old Wisconsin Germans. I'm Irish
myself."
Bright scintillating dialogue, stirring the quick response. But he
felt as relaxed as though he had hay in his hair. He looked out at the
deserted road, at the fields beyond, at the clouds on the clear
horizon. Rural summer--a quiet Saturday morning in the agricultural
Midwest only nineteen minutes from Chicago.
People spoke of other worlds and here was one, nineteen minutes from
Chicago. And last night, under the lucidate, the town banker had gone
to another world, three hundred years away, had gone back to the magic
of Burns.
A great lad for the ladies, Bobbie Burns, and a great love for the
people. A poet with revolutionary leanings, all heart, a bleeder and a
believer. Studious, Doak sat, on the front porch in another world.
Were the people so stupid they couldn't be trusted with words? They
could be misled with words and confused and stirred to unrighteous
anger. And informed with words and guided and ennobled and solaced and
stirred to high destiny.
How had wrestling ever taken the place of words?