"For publication. Now give me the real facts--under that overcoat of yours."
Dr. Surtaine started, and winced as the movement tweaked the raw nerves of his wound. "There"s nothing else to tell," he said.
"You brought me here to lie for you," said the journalist. "All right, I"m ready. But if I"m to lie and not get caught at it, I must know the truth. Now, when I see a man wearing an overcoat over a painful arm, and discover what looks like a new bullet hole in the wall of the room, I think a dead body may mean something more than heart disease."
"I don"t see--" began the charlatan.
But Hal cut him short. "For G.o.d"s sake," he cried in a voice which seemed to gouge its way through his straining throat, "let"s have done with lies for once." And he blurted out the whole story, eking out what he lacked in detail, by insistent questioning of his father.
When they came to the part about the Relief Pills, Ellis looked up with a bitter grin.
"Works out quite logically, doesn"t it?" he observed. Then, walking over to the body, he looked down into the face, with a changed expression.
"Poor little girl!" he muttered. "Poor little Kitty!" He whirled swiftly upon the Surtaines. "By G.o.d, _I"d_ like to write her story!" he cried.
The outburst was but momentary. Instantly he was his cool, capable self again.
"You"ve had experience in this sort of thing before, I suppose?" he inquired of Dr. Surtaine.
"Yes. No! Whaddye mean?" bl.u.s.tered the quack.
"Only that you"ll know how to fix the police and the coroner."
"No call for any fixing."
"So all that I have to do is to handle the newspapers," pursued the other imperturbably. "All right. There"ll be no more than a paragraph in any paper to-morrow. "Working-Girl Drops Dead," or something like that.
You can sleep easy, gentlemen."
So obvious was the taunt that Hal stared at his friend, astounded. Upon the Doctor it made no impression.
"Say, Ellis. Do something for me, will you?" he requested. "Wire to Belford Couch, the Willard, Washington, to come on here by first train."
"Couch? Oh, that"s Certina Charley, isn"t it? Your professional fixer?"
"Never mind what he is. You"ll be sure to do it, won"t you?"
"No. Do it yourself," said Ellis curtly, and walked out without a good-night.
"Well, whaddye think of that!" spluttered Dr. Surtaine. "That fellow"s getting the big-head."
Hal made no reply. He had dropped into a chair and now sat with his head between his hands. When he raised his face it was haggard as if with famine.
"Dad, I"m going away."
"Where?" demanded his father, startled.
"Anywhere, away from this house."
"No wonder you"re shaken, Boyee," said the other soothingly. "We"ll talk about it in the morning. After a night"s rest--"
"In this house? I couldn"t close my eyes for fear of what I"d see!"
"It"s been a tough business. I"ll give you a sleeping powder."
"No; I"ve got to think this out: this whole business of the Relief Pills."
Dr. Surtaine was instantly on the defensive. "Don"t go getting any sentimental notions now, Hal. It"s a perfectly legal business."
"So much the worse for the law, then."
"You talk like an anarchist!" returned his father, shocked. "Do you want to be better than the law?"
"If the law permits murder--I do," said Hal, very low.
Indignation rose up within Dr. Surtaine: not wholly unjustified, considering his belief that Hal was primarily responsible for the tragedy. "Are your hands so clean, then?" he asked significantly.
"G.o.d knows, they"re not!" cried the son, with pa.s.sion. "I didn"t know. I didn"t realize."
"Yet you turn on me--"
"Oh, Dad, I don"t want to quarrel with you. All I know is, I can"t stay in this house any more."
Dr. Surtaine pondered for a few minutes. Perhaps it was better that the boy should go for a time, until his conscience worked out a more satisfactory state of mind. His own conscience was clear. He was doing business within the limits set for him by the law and the Post Office authorities, which had once investigated the "Pills" and given them a clean bill. Milly Neal should not put the onus of her own recklessness and immorality upon him. Nevertheless, he was glad that Belford Couch was coming on; and, by the way, he must telephone a dispatch to him.
Rising, he addressed his son.
"Where shall you go?"
"I don"t know. Some hotel. The Dunstan."
"Very well. I"ll see you at the office soon, I suppose. Good-night."
All Hal"s world whirled about him as he saw his father leave the room.
What seemed to him a monstrous manifestation of chance had overwhelmed and swept him from all moorings. But was it chance? Was it not, rather, as McGuire Ellis had suggested, the exemplification of an exact logic?
The closing of the door behind his father sent a current of air across the room in which a bit of paper on the floor wavered and turned. Hal picked it up. It was the clipping from the "Clarion"--his newspaper--which Milly Neal had brought as her justification. One line of print stood out, writhing as if in an uncontrollable access of diabolic glee: "Only $1 A Box: Satisfaction Guaranteed"; and above it the face of the Happy Lady, distorted by the crumpling of the paper, smirked up at him with a taunt. He thought to interpret that taunt in the words which Veltman had used, aforetime:--
"What"s _your_ percentage?"
CHAPTER XXVII
THE GREATER TEMPTING
Journalistic Worthington ran true to type in the Milly Neal affair. No newspaper published more than a paragraph about the "sudden death."
Suicide was not even hinted at in print. But newspaperdom had its own opinion, magnified and colored by the processes of gossip, over which professional courtesy exercised no control. That the girl had killed herself was generally understood: that there had been a shooting, previous to her death, was also current. Eager report recalled and exaggerated the fact that she had been seen with Hal Surtaine at a dubious road-house some months previous. The popular "inside knowledge"
of the tragedy was that Milly had gone to the Surtaine mansion to force Hal"s hand, failing in which she had shot him, inflicting an inconsiderable wound, and then killed herself; and that Dr. Surtaine had thereupon turned his son out of the house. Hal"s removal to the hotel served to bear out this surmise, and the Doctor"s strategic effort to cover the situation by giving it out that his son"s part of the mansion was being remodeled--even going to the lengths of actually setting a force of men to work there--failed to convince the gossips.