The Clarion Part 42

"h.e.l.lo! That you, Doctor Simons?--Seen O'Farrell?--Yes; you ought to get in touch with him right away--Three more cases going over to you.--Oh, they're there, are they? You're isolating them, aren't you?--Pest-house?

That's all right.--All bills will be paid--liberally. You understand?--What are you calling it? Diphtheria?--Good enough for the present.--Ever see infectious meningitis? I thought it might be that, maybe--No? What do you think, then?--_What_! Good G.o.d, man! It can't be!

Such a thing has never been heard of in this part of the country--What?--Yes: you're right. We can't talk over the 'phone. Come over to-morrow. Good-bye."

Putting up the receiver, Dr. Surtaine turned to his desk and sat immersed in thought. Presently he shook his head. He scratched a few notes on a pad, tore off the sheet and thrust it into the small safe at his elbow. Proof of a half-page Certina display beckoned him in buoyant, promissory type to his favorite task. He glanced at the safe. Once again he shook his head, this time more decisively, took the scribbled paper out and tore it into shreds. Turning to the proof he bent over it, striking out a word here, amending there, jotting in a printer's direction on the margin; losing himself in the major interest.

The "special investigator" of the "Clarion" was committing the unpardonable sin of journalism. He was throwing his paper down.

CHAPTER XV

JUGGERNAUT

Misfortunes never come singly--to the reckless. The first mischance breeds the second, apparently by ill luck, but in reality through the influence of irritant nerves. Thus descended Nemesis upon Miss Kathleen Pierce. Not that Miss Pierce was of a misgiving temperament: she had too calm and superb a conviction of her own incontrovertible privilege in every department of life for that. But Esme Elliot had given her a hint of her narrow escape from the "Clarion," and she was angry. To the Pierce type of disposition, anger is a spur. Kathleen's large green car increased its accustomed twenty-miles-an-hour pace, from which the police of the business section thoughtfully averted their faces, to something nearer twenty-five. Three days after the wreck of the apple cart, she got results.

Harrington Surtaine was crossing diagonally to the "Clarion" office when the moan of a siren warned him for his life, and he jumped back from the Pierce juggernaut. As it swept by he saw Kathleen at the wheel. Beside her sat her twelve-year-old brother. A miscellaneous array of small luggage was heaped behind them.

"Never mind the speed laws," murmured Hal softly. "_Sauve qui peut_.

There, by Heavens, she's done it!"

The car had swerved at the corner, but not quite quickly enough. There was a snort of the horn, a scream that gritted on the ear like the clamor of tortured metals, and a huddle of black and white was flung almost at Hal's feet. Equally quick with him, a middle-aged man, evidently of the prosperous working-cla.s.ses, helped him to pick the woman up. She was a trained nurse. The white band on her uniform was splotched with blood. She groaned once and lapsed, inert, in their arms.

"Help me get her to the automobile," said Hal. "This is a hospital case."

"What automobile?" said the other.

Hal glanced up the street. He saw the green car turning a corner, a full block away.

"She didn't even stop," he muttered, in a paralysis of surprise.

"Stop?" said the other. "Her? That's E.M. Pierce's she-whelp. True to the breed. She don't care no more for a workin'-woman's life than her father does for a workin'-man's."

A policeman hurried up, glanced at the woman and sent in an ambulance call.

"I want your name," said Hal to the stranger.

"What for?"

"Publication now. Later, prosecution. I'm the editor of the 'Clarion.'"

The man took off his hat and scratched his head. "Leave me out of it,"

he said.

"You won't help me to get justice for this woman?'" cried Hal.

"What can you do to E.M. Pierce's girl in this town?" retorted the man fiercely. "Don't he own the town?"

"He doesn't own the 'Clarion.'"

"Let the 'Clarion' go up against him, then. I daresn't."

"You'll never get him," said a voice close to Hal's ear. It was Veltman, the foreman of the 'Clarion' composing-room. "He's a street-car employee. It's as much as his job is worth to go up against Pierce."

They were pressed back, as the clanging ambulance arrived with its white-coated commander.

"No; not dead," he said. "Help me get her in."

This being accomplished, Hal hurried up to the city room of the paper.

He remembered the pile of suit-cases in the Pierce car, and made his deductions.

"Send a reporter to the Union Station to find Kathleen Pierce. She's in a green touring-car. She's just run down a trained nurse. Have him interview her; ask her why she didn't turn back after she struck the woman; whether she doesn't know the law. Find out if she's going to the hospital. Get her estimate of how fast she was going. We'll print anything she says. Then he's to go to St. James Hospital, and ask about the nurse. I'll give him the details of the accident."

News of a certain kind, of the kind important to the inner machinery of a newspaper, spreads swiftly inside an office. Within an hour, Shearson, the advertising manager, was at his chief's desk.

"About that story of Miss Pierce running over the trained nurse," he began.

"What is your suggestion?" asked Hal curiously.

"E.M. Pierce is a power in this town, and out of it. He's the real head of the Retail Dry Goods Union. He's a director in the Security Power Products Company. He's the big boss of the National Consolidated Employers' a.s.sociation. He practically runs the Retail Dry Goods Union.

Gibbs, of the Boston Store, is his brother-in-law, and the girl's uncle.

Mr. Pierce has got a hand in pretty much everything in Worthington. And he's a bad man in a fight."

"So I have heard."

"If we print this story--"

"We're going to print the story, Mr. Shearson."

"It's full of dynamite."

"It was a brutal thing. If she hadn't driven right on--"

"But she's only a kid."

"The more reason why she shouldn't be driving a car."

"Why have you got it in for her, Mr. Surtaine?" ventured the other.

"I haven't got it in for her. But we've let her off once. And this is too flagrant a case."

"It means a loss of thousands of dollars in advertising, just as like as not."

"That can't be helped."

Shearson did the only thing he could think of in so unheard-of an emergency. He went out to call up the office of E.M. Pierce.