boucher book oct28.pdf - Index of

466 Anthony Boucher
“Sure. But—”
“All right. Then you stay here and let me cover this murder.”
“That’s absurd. It’s my job to—”
“If you know how much I want to turn out some copy that isn’t about visiting
and strawberry jam— And besides, this’ll be all tied up with the Hitchcocks. Maybe
even Laura’ll be there. And when you’re … well, involved a little with people, how
can you be a good reporter? Me, I don’t give a damn about Hitchcocks. But with
you, maybe you’d be in a spot where you’d have to be either a lousy reporter or a
lousy friend.”
MacVeagh grinned. “As usual, Friday, you make sense. Go on. Get out there and
bring me back the best story the Sentinel ever printed. Go ahead. Git.”
“Gee, boss—” Molly groped for words, but all she found was another and even
more heartfelt “Gee—” Then she was gone.
MacVeagh smiled to himself. Swell person, Molly. He’d be lost without her. Grand
wife for some man, if he liked them a little on the plump side. If, for instance, he
had never seen the superb slim body of Laura Hitchcock—
But thoughts of Laura now would only get in the way. He’d have to see her
tomorrow. Offer his condolences on the death of her aunt. Perhaps in comforting
her distress—
Though it would be difficult, and even unconvincing, to display too much grief
at Agnes Rogers’ death. She had been Grover’s great eccentric, a figure of fun, liked
well enough, in a disrespectful way, but hardly loved. A wealthy widow—she held
an interest in the Hitchcock plant second only to H. A.’s own—she had let her
fortune take care of itself—and of her—while she indulged in a frantic crackpot
quest for the Ultimate Religious Truth. At least once a year she would proclaim that
she had found it, and her house would be filled with the long-robed disciples of the
Church of the Eleven Apostles—which claimed that the election by lot of Matthias
had been fraudulent and invalidated the apostolic succession of all other churches;
or the sharp-eyed, businesslike emissaries of Christoid Thought—which seemed to
preach the Gospel according to St. Dale.
It was hard to take Agnes Rogers’ death too seriously. But that ultimate seriousness
transfigures, at least for the moment, the most ludicrous of individuals.
Whalen was reading when John MacVeagh entered his cubbyhole off the printing
room. One of those books that no one, not even Father Byrne, had ever recognized
the letters of. It made MacVeagh realize again how little he knew of this last survival
of the race of tramp printers, who came out of nowhere to do good work and vanish
back into nowhere.
Brownies, he thought. With whiskey in their saucers instead of milk.
Not that Whalen looked like any brownie. He was taller than MacVeagh himself,
and thinner than Phil Rogers. The funniest thing about him was that when you
called up a memory image of him, you saw him with a beard. He didn’t have any,
but there was something about the thin long nose, the bright deepset eyes— Anyway,
you saw a beard.
You could almost see it now, in the half-light outside the circle that shone on
the unknown alphabet. He looked up as MacVeagh came in and said, “John. Good.
I wanted to see you.”