Читать книгу Son of a Hundred Kings - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 18

The sun had disappeared when the shuttle train came rocking and belching into Balfour, and it was already so dark that the street lighter was busy with the lampposts at the ends of the platform. The illumination thus provided gave the low station of blackened red brick and green wooden trim an atmosphere of cheerful activity.

A man with intense black eyes, who wore neither overcoat, muffler, nor gloves, darted out from the waiting room and came across the tracks to the train. He walked with bent head, muttering to himself. “Nothing from nothing,” he was saying. “Nothing from nothing. Nothing remains.” His manner changed when he spotted Conductor Cobbler alighting from the front coach. He ran up to him and laid a hand on the lapel of his coat.

“You’re late again, Cobbler,” he said accusingly. “Seven minutes.”

The conductor laughed. “Only seven minutes? Why, that’s the same as being on time. We can generally manage to be much later than that.” He stopped laughing and went on to say in an impatient tone: “Now look. Jerry Fowley, you’re a busy man, being president of two railways like this. You can’t spare the time to bother with the likes of me. Why don’t you go over to the express offices and make them show you the books?”

Jerry Fowley, whose shoulders were bent with the heavy responsibilities he carried, was not willing to be put off. He drew out a dollar watch of the kind known as a turnip. “Seven minutes and fifty seconds, Joe Cobbler,” he said. “I won’t have this sort of thing. If you’re late again, I’ll throw you off the pay roll.”

For the first time in his life, perhaps, Cobbler had an inspiration. He turned and faced his critic. “Listen, Jerry. There’s been a wreck on the other line. Why don’t you go over there?”

An excited gleam came into Fowley’s eyes. “A wreck?” he cried. “Why wasn’t it reported to me, eh? Were they scared to tell me? That was it. They were scared of me. Scared I’d throw the whole kit and biling of ’em off the pay roll.” He clutched at Cobbler’s arm. “Is the wrecking crew on the job? Has the ambulance been called?”

“Certainly not. They don’t dare do anything until you get there. They’re standing around and waiting for orders from you. I hear the groans of the dead and dying can be heard all the way to Eagle Nest. You better get over there as fast as you can.”

The ruse was successful. Jerry Fowley ran down the platform, shouting over his shoulder as he went, “Call the hospital, Joe!” In something under a minute his bent back and long thin legs had vanished around the corner of the dingy station.

This was the start of Balfour’s longest running joke. Every day from that time on, poor Jerry Fowley was sent back and forth from station to station with reports of wrecks. Whereas he had spent his time previously in brisk visits to the freight yards and roundhouses, staring through the windows at busy clerks and issuing absurd orders in his deep voice, he now kept on the run, shouting the news of death, suffering, and destruction, and babbling orders for the relief of the victims.

Publisher Milner materialized out of the dusk at Cobbler’s shoulder and asked, “Where’s the boy?”

“Right here, Mr. Milner.”

Ludar was standing behind the conductor of the shuttle train and looking about him in astonishment at the huge quantities of snow. The branches of the trees were weighted down with it, and it was piled up in globular whiteness on the roof of the station. The wind was rising. The boy, in his overcoatless condition, was shivering with the cold.

“Well, my boy,” said the publisher in a voice which he strove to make kind and sympathetic, “here we are. We must see about getting you out of this at once. I don’t suppose you’re accustomed to this kind of weather.”

“N-no, s-sir,” answered the boy, his teeth chattering.

The publisher frowned in the direction of the station platform. “Where is the confounded fellow! I’m expecting one of my staff, Cobbler. Bates, I imagine.”

“And here he comes.” The conductor pointed. “Never knew him to miss this train. Not Sloppy Bates. He gets too many good items out of me. About people who’ve been traveling. I guess your paper couldn’t get along, Mr. Milner, without me and the six-two train.”

The stooped figure of a man approached them, peering about him as he walked, and staggering slightly. Resentment had been piling up in the mind of the irascible publisher, and he now proceeded to vent it all on his inebriated employee.

“You drunken fool!” he exclaimed. “What do you mean, being in this condition when you represent the Star?”

“Of course I’m drunk.” Bates said this in an aggrieved tone. He nodded his head, on which he wore a dilapidated tam-o’-shanter. “Why, damn everybody’s eyes, I’m always drunk at this time of day. You know that, Mr. Milner. Everybody knows it. As this is New Year’s, I’m just a little drunker than usual.”

“I wish there was some way of getting rid of you!” said Milner, literally gritting his teeth.

“But there isn’t.” The old reporter performed a dance step with his stiffened legs, something between a buck and wing and the first movement of a Highland fling. “There isn’t, Mr. Milner! You’ll never be able to get rid of me.”

This was true. Daniel Cape, who had founded the Star and had run it for thirty-five years by methods and ideas all his own, had been very reluctant to sell the newspaper and had resisted the importunities of Milner for many years. When poor health made it impossible for him to continue he had given in, but he had insisted on inserting a list of conditions into the agreement of sale. This, the new proprietor must always do; this, he must never do. One of the things he must never do was to discharge John Kinchley Bates, who had been a faithful reporter almost from the birth of the paper. Unfortunately for Bates himself, the exacting founder had added a further condition. “The aforesaid Bates is never to receive an increase of pay until he has gone three months without alcoholic stimulants passing his lips, his drinking habits having always militated against the proper execution of his duties and having been a constant bone of contention between him and the party of the first part.” Thus the party of the first part, Mr. Daniel Cape, had succeeded in having the last word in the long bickering. As Sloppy Bates could not conceivably go three hours without a drink, not to speak of months, he would never get the raise the stern founder had denied him.

Milner restrained the capering of the aforesaid Bates with both hands. “Now listen to me, you clown,” he said. “I may not be able to fire you, but I can put you at sweeping out the office and cleaning the toilets if I’ve a mind to. I’ve been thinking of doing it——”

Bates cackled. “I wouldn’t be good at it, Mr. Milner. I promise you, the office will get into a state if you do.”

“Forget about that now. You’ve got to pull yourself together and handle a story. I hope you’re not too muddled to get the facts straight.”

“I write my best when I’m drunkest,” declared Bates with an air of offended dignity. “Everybody knows that. I saw six moons in the sky the night I wrote the murder of Fanny Barley. It was after that when Mr. Cape said he would fix things so I would never have to leave the Star.”

“If I didn’t know that Daniel Cape was a teetotaler I would say he was drunk himself when he made that promise. Because you were so intoxicated that you wrote a good account of the murder of an Indian girl, I’ve got to put up with you and your filthy ways as long as you live!”

“Perhaps not. Perhaps I’ll decide to buy a newspaper of my own.” This idea struck Bates as so funny that he cackled still louder. Then, regaining some degree of sobriety, he went on. “What is this story? Let me at it and I’ll write a report which will march through the columns of the Star like a regiment with colors flying.”

Milner drew him aside and proceeded to tell him what the story was about.

“Him?” asked Bates, pointing a finger in the direction of the shivering boy.

“Yes. I want you to go along with him and his father and get everything. It’s human-interest stuff, Bates, and I’m sure it’s worth a lot of space. Get the boy talking about what happened to him on the way over. And find out all you can about this man Prentice.”

Bates let out a sound like a cork being drawn from a bottle of wine. “What did you say, Mr. Milner?”

“I said to question the boy’s father, this Englishman Prentice.”

There was a moment’s silence while Bates teetered on his unsteady legs and gazed at his employer with astonishment and dismay.

“No!” he said finally. “It can’t be. I tell you, it’s impossible. It’s against all the rules for a thing like this to happen. Damn everybody’s eyes! It can’t be so!”

“You’re so drunk you don’t know what you’re saying,” declared the publisher in a tone of final disgust.

Bates drew himself up as straight as the permanent crick in his back would allow.

“Mr. Milner,” he said, “your story has turned into a tragedy. The boy’s father isn’t here to meet him. A telegram arrived for him this afternoon. Being a holiday, they didn’t deliver it right away. In fact, it was just an hour ago that the messenger went to Creek and Stapley’s stables, where he’s been sleeping. It was just too late. The poor fellow had taken a shotgun and blown the top of his head off.”