boucher book oct28.pdf - Index of

We Print the Truth 475
in a sheet of copy paper. “We’ll hold the fort.” He began to type.
Molly looked up from her own copy. “Get any new leads, boss?”
“No,” he said reflectively. “This is just an experiment.” He wrote:
A sudden freakish windstorm hit Grover last night. For ten minutes
windows rattled furiously, and old citizens began to recall the Great Wind
of ’97.
The storm died down as suddenly as it came, however. No damage was
done except to the statue of General Wigginsby in Courthouse Square, which
was blown from its pedestal, breaking off the head and one arm.
C. B. Tooly, chairman of the Grover Scrap Drive, expressed great pleasure
at the accident. Members of the Civic Planning Commission were reportedly
even more pleased at the removal of Grover’s outstanding eyesore.
He tore the sheet out of the typewriter. Then a perversely puckish thought struck
him and he inserted another page. He headed it:
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
Coroner Jake Willis has apparently abandoned his thirty-year stand of
strict atheism. “In times like these,” he said last night, “we need faith in
something outside of ourselves. I’ve been a stubborn fool for too long.”
Molly spoke as he stopped typing. “What kind of experiment, boss?”
“Let you know Friday,” he said. “Hold on tight, Molly. If this experiment
works—”
For a moment he leaned back in his chair, his eyes aglow with visions of fabulous
possibilities. Then he laughed out loud and got on with his work.
III
No paper was ever gotten out by a more distracted editor than that Friday’s issue of
the Grover Sentinel.
Two things preoccupied John MacVeagh. One, of course, was his purely rational
experiment in scientific methods as applied to miracles. Not that he believed for an
instant that whatever gestures Whalen Smith had woven in the air could impart to
the Sentinel the absolute and literal faculty of printing the truth—and making it
the truth by printing it. But the episode of the seventeen-year-old corpse had been
a curious one. It deserved checking—rationally and scientifically, you understand.
And the other distraction was the effect upon Grover of the murder.
Almost, John MacVeagh was becoming persuaded that his crusading truthfulness
had been a mistake. Perhaps there was some justice in the attitude of the bluenoses
who decry sensational publishing. Certainly the town’s reaction to the sensational
news was not healthy.
On the one hand, inevitably, there was the group—vocally headed by Banker
Manson—who claimed that what they called the “smear campaign” was a vile conspiracy
between MacVeagh and labor leader Tim Bricker.