Authors: Whit Masterson
Mitch Holt was one of the last to see the
Press-Examiner
, although the story had been read to him over the telephone the night before, previous to publication. But his first glimpse of the paper itself was in the hands of his first visitor, the forerunner of what turned out to be an invasion.
Reporters he had expected, and they didn’t disappoint him. What he hadn’t expected was a swarm of private citizens who had descended upon his home before he had finished his breakfast. His initial caller, the woman who bore the
Press-Examiner
clutched tightly in her hands, was typical. She was the mother of a young man now serving time in San Quentin prison.
“Mr. Holt, you’ve got to help my Jimmy. I never believed he stole all those cars and now I’m sure of it. If you can make them give him a new trial — ”
“I sympathize with you,” Holt told her, “but I can’t help you. This is an entirely different matter, don’t you see that? I haven’t got the power to make anyone do anything.”
She didn’t believe him, nor did the others who followed her. They came in droves, tearful wives trailing small children, fathers and mothers, even brothers and sisters. They were all different yet they all shared something in common, a relative in prison and a burning hope that Holt could help them. At first, he tried to reason with each one but it was useless. They gave no sign of understanding him, or in most cases even hearing him.
“What can I tell them?” Holt complained to his wife during a breathing spell. “I’m no messiah and that’s what they’re looking for.”
“You can’t blame them, Mitch. They’re desperate, clutching at straws.”
“But there hasn’t been one of them yet where McCoy had anything to do with the case. Do they think I can open the prisons for everybody?”
Apparently that was the answer because they continued to arrive throughout the morning until at last Holt was forced to refuse to answer the door and to remove the telephone from its cradle. Even this did not drive away the suppliants. They clustered on his lawn and huddled in small groups at the curb, each repeating his own particular story over and over to anyone who would listen. It was a state of siege.
• • •
F. Milton Carstairs had lunch with a fellow attorney at the Rowing Club. “Read the papers this morning?”
“Who hasn’t? Looks to me like Holt’s gone off the deep end. You got to watch out for that quiet type.”
“I hope you’re right. That cop — McCoy — was in the office most of the morning. I’m drawing up the biggest damn libel action this town has ever seen. One million bucks, actual and punitive.”
His luncheon companion whistled. “Holt doesn’t have that kind of money.”
“No, but maybe the
Press-Examiner
has. We’re naming them co-defendants.”
• • •
At one o’clock a sheriff’s prowl car apprehended a woman throwing poisoned grain over the fence of McCoy’s turkey ranch at Whiteside. She was the widow of a man who had been executed in the state gas chamber. The deputies took her to the County Hospital’s psychopathic ward for observation. The
Evening News
, sensing an opportunity to sway public sympathy which was always stirred more by cruelty to animals than to human beings, played it big.
• • •
Douglas Fenn was unavailable for comment. His secretary let it be known that the grand jury foreman was ill.
In early afternoon, the district attorney finally held a much-delayed press conference. Adair passed out a mimeographed statement whose careful phrasing showed that a good deal of thought had gone into it.
The statement read: “My office has become aware of certain charges made today by my assistant, Mr. Mitchell Holt. It must be understood that in making these charges Mr. Holt is speaking only for himself and not for this office. Mr. Holt is a capable man who has shown signs recently of being under a strain caused by overwork. I have, therefore, ordered Mr. Holt’s duties to be suspended pending an investigation.”
Questions followed. “Does this suspension mean that Holt is fired?”
“Suspension means precisely what it says, nothing more.”
“Do you believe that Holt’s charges have anything to them?”
“I’ll have no final comment to make on that until my investigation is completed. At the moment, however, I see no basis for the accusations Mr. Holt has made against Captain McCoy and the police department.”
“That sounds like you’ve already decided what the investigation is going to show.” This came from a
Press-Examiner
reporter, of course.
Adair flushed. “That is just not so. My only concern is the public interest. I don’t intend to take sides on a basis of personalities. That’s all I have to say now, gentlemen. Good afternoon.”
“I think we’ve got a new name for Two-Gun,” the
Press-Examiner
reporter murmured to another as they left. “Pontius Pilate.”
By delaying his announcement of Holt’s suspension until afternoon, Adair had hoped to give the news break to the pro-administration newspapers. But the
Press-Examiner
fooled him. Ingram put out an extra.
HOLT MUZZLED BY D.A. PENDING “PROBE” …
• • •
Mr. and Mrs. Delmont Shayon were reached by a reporter in mid-afternoon. The newlyweds had been the subject of an assiduous search but were not located until someone thought of trying Shayon’s apartment which, it turned out, they were using in preference to the Linneker mansion.
“Mr. Holt is one of the finest, most honourable men I’ve ever known,” said Tara. “I’m behind him one hundred per cent.”
Shayon put it even stronger. “If anybody’s lying in this matter, it isn’t Holt. So who does that leave?”
These were probably the friendliest words spoken in Holt’s defence by anyone and Holt would have been gratified to read them. But they were never printed. The reporter was from the
Evening News
and the story was killed by the city editor. He liked his job and wanted to keep it.
• • •
Van Dusen was approached at the Coke machine by one of the secretaries from the district attorney’s office. She had a problem.
“Yesterday Mr. Holt asked me to place all the carbons of the extracts he had been working on in a locked file and not to give them to anyone. But now, with his being suspended and all, I was wondering if I should turn them over to Mr. Adair.”
Van Dusen considered. “Why don’t you just give me the key? I’ll talk to Adair about it myself.”
She was gratefully relieved. “Oh, would you? I don’t want to get into any trouble.”
Van Dusen pocketed the file key. But when he had finished his coke, he did not head in the direction of Adair’s office. Instead he left the Civic Centre and disappeared into the restaurant across the street.
“A little early, aren’t you?” the bartender greeted him.
“A little,” Van Dusen agreed. “Make it a double.”
• • •
Jonathan Ingram called in his managing editor about three o’clock. “How are we doing on the Holt story?”
“I don’t know,” Underwood admitted. “It’s kicked up a lot of dust, all right, but everybody’s playing it close to the vest. So far it’s still just Holt’s word against the rest of them.”
“Still no lever?”
“Just straight denials right down the line. My boys can’t find McCoy, which is obviously just as he wants it to be.”
“Well, we can’t go on running the same stuff over and over,” mused Ingram. “We’ve either got to develop it or drop it. Any ideas?”
“As I see it, Farnum’s the key. If we could get him to admit that he was pressured into changing his story …” Underwood shrugged. “I’ve been trying all day to get a man in to see him but the cops got him wrapped up tighter than Fort Knox. Gould’s out of town — very conveniently — and the rest of them won’t make a move without his okay. Without Farnum, we’re dead, as I see it.”
“Then we’ve got to get to Farnum.”
“Or dump Holt,” Underwood agreed.
“There’s still such a thing as habeas corpus.” Ingram picked up his telephone. “Get me the legal department.”
• • •
Rackmill, the chairman of the party’s county central committee, had spent most of his day on the telephone, some of his calls going as far as the state capital in Sacramento. It was one of those days when he wondered why he hadn’t stuck to the insurance business.
What a hell of a thing to happen, he thought, with the primaries only a couple of months away. It had shaped up as a difficult campaign, anyway, touch and go, and this couldn’t help but make things worse, no matter how it turned out. Rackmill blamed Adair for what had happened; if Adair had handled the situation differently and not put young Holt’s back up, at least smoothed things over until the primaries were past … He toyed with the idea of dumping Adair and finding a new name for the ticket. But that wouldn’t solve anything; merely be an admission that things weren’t as they should be. No, the party had no choice except to put up a united front, ride things out and not give Holt an inch.
“There’s really nothing to worry about,” Rackmill told himself as he had told countless others during the day. And there wasn’t. Holt couldn’t get anywhere alone, he was bucking a stone wall. It was too bad, really, since Holt was a bright youngster who might have gone places, just the sort of young blood they needed. But it didn’t pay to be a lone wolf. You couldn’t get along without the organization and Holt would find that out. Rackmill permitted himself to feel a little sorry for Holt.
• • •
Sergeant Hank Quinlan sat at his desk, although it was by now past his usual quitting time. He was alone. The reporters had hounded him for a while but his consistent growl of, “No comment,” had finally discouraged them.
Quinlan tried for perhaps the fiftieth time that day to reach McCoy at the ranch. But, for the fiftieth time, there was no answer. Where the hell was Mac, anyway? Why didn’t he show up, as Quinlan had expected, to hurl the lie back into Holt’s teeth? And why, after thirty years of partnership, did he feel so alone?
Brooding, Quinlan stared down at his leg. It throbbed painfully, the old wound that he had taken instead of Mac. No word from Mac, his leg hurting — and all because of a wild-eyed punk named Holt. With a sudden twitch of his big hands, he seized his cane and broke it savagely across the desk top.
• • •
“Are they still there?” Holt asked wearily.
Connie turned from peeking between the slats of the Venetian blind. “I think they’re gone. Do you want me to go outside and make sure?”
“No.” He resumed his pacing across the living room. “Why don’t we hear something? Something must have happened today.”
“Mitch, sit down and try to relax. You’re going to be so worn out that you won’t be worth a darn. You know as well as I do that something’s bound to break. You’ve done all you can. You’ve waited for juries before, haven’t you?”
“Not when I was on trial. But you’re right, Connie. The break’s bound to come.”
The break came at six o’clock that evening but it didn’t break Holt’s way. Ernest Farnum hanged himself in his cell at the city jail, five minutes before Ingram’s lawyers arrived with a writ of habeas corpus.
T
HE
doorbell rang about eight o’clock. When Holt peeked out, he discovered it was Underwood. Holt unlatched the door to admit him. The
Press-Examiner
editor’s face was grave.
“I’ve been phoning you for the last hour and all I got was a busy signal,” he said. “So I thought I’d better drop around. You deserve to know beforehand.”
Holt felt his stomach contract. Underwood’s tone didn’t stamp him as the bearer of glad tidings. Automatically, he introduced Connie and invited their visitor to seat himself. Underwood sat on the edge of the chair, as if he didn’t intend to linger. There was a moment of silence.
“Well, tell me the worst,” Holt suggested quietly. “I’m braced.”
“Farnum committed suicide tonight in his cell. Hanged himself with a rope he made out of tearing up his blanket.”
Connie made a wavering sound of shocked surprise and Holt murmured, “Poor devil. Is that the bad news — or is there more?”
“There’s more. The
Press-Examiner’s
pulling out. We’re dropping the story.”
Connie protested, “But you can’t do that! Don’t you understand, Mitch will be all alone, worse off than he was before.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Holt. But I warned your husband in the beginning that this might happen. He knew that it was a gamble.”
“But if he’s telling the truth,” Connie said hotly, “what difference does it — ”
Holt interrupted her. “Connie, just a minute. I’d like to find out more about this. Are you ditching me because Farnum committed suicide — or are there other reasons?”
Underwood rubbed his moustache uncomfortably. “Understand this. It’s not my decision basically. We had a hurry-up meeting with Mr. Ingram this evening and that’s when it was decided. We knew yesterday that we were going out on a limb by printing your story but it was a calculated risk that we were willing to take. You were at the meeting, Holt, you know how it was. But Farnum was your key witness, really your only witness. Without him to back up your story, you haven’t got a leg to stand on.”
“But if you’d just give me some more time. At least let things ride for a day or two — ”
“I’m sorry,” Underwood said regretfully. “Like I said, it’s really not my decision to change. I’m just a messenger boy. But I thought the least I could do was to tell you to your face.”
“We appreciate your thoughtfulness,” Connie said icily. “And your great courage.”
“Are you going to print a retraction?” Holt asked. “Is that what you mean?”
“No need for a retraction, the way the story was handled. We just drop it, that’s all.” Underwood rose. “Speaking personally, I’m sorry as hell that it turned out this way. You kicked up a fine ruckus, Holt, and the pressure that’s been put on Mr. Ingram today has been terrific. They know your name all the way back to Washington. We could stand the pressure as long as we thought you had a chance, but …” He shrugged. “Well, better luck next time.”