style="font-size:15px;"> "Damn it, I'm not venerable, nor anything like it. Only sixty. Sixty-one, I should say."
"Matter of ratio, my dear fellow. I'm forty-seven m'self, and I have no doubt the young pups already call me venerable! But as I was saying, Doremus—"
(Why was it he winced with fury every time Swan called him that?)
"—with your position as one of the Council of Elders, and with your responsibilities to your family—it would be too sick-making if anything happened to them, y' know!—you just can't afford to be too brash! And all we desire is for you to play along with us in your paper—I would adore the chance of explaining some of the Corpos' and the Chief's still unrevealed plans to you. You'd see such a new light!"
Shad grunted, "Him? Jessup couldn't see a new light if it was on the end of his nose!"
"A moment, my dear Captain. . . . And also, Doremus, of course we shall urge you to help us by giving us a complete list of every person in this vicinity that you know of who is secretly opposed to the Administration."
"Spying? Me?"
"Quite!"
"If I'm accused of—I insist on having my lawyer, Mungo Kitterick, and on being tried, not all this bear-baiting—"
"Quaint name. Mungo Kitterick! Oh, my only aunt! Why does it give me so absurd a picture of an explorer with a Greek grammar in his hand? You don't quite understand, my Doremus. Habeas corpus—due processes of law—too, too bad!—all those ancient sanctities, dating, no doubt, from Magna Charta, been suspended—oh, but just temporarily, y' know—state of crisis—unfortunate necessity martial law—"
"Damn it, Swan—"
"Commander, my dear fellow—ridiculous matter of military discipline, y' know—such rot!"
"You know mighty well and good it isn't temporary! It's permanent—that is, as long as the Corpos last."
"It could be!"
"Swan—Commander—you get that 'it could be' and 'my aunt' from the Reggie Fortune stories, don't you?"
"Now there is a fellow detective-story fanatic! But how too bogus!"
"And that's Evelyn Waugh! You're quite a literary man for so famous a yachtsman and horseman, Commander."
"Horsemun, yachtsmun, lit-er-ary man! Am I, Doremus, even in my sanctum sanctorum, having, as the lesser breeds would say, the pants kidded off me? Oh, my Doremus, that couldn't be! And just when one is so feeble, after having been so, shall I say excoriated, by your so amiable friend, Mrs. Lorinda Pike? No, no! How too unbefitting the majesty of the law!"
Shad interrupted again, "Yeh, we had a swell time with your girl-friend, Jessup. But I already had the dope about you and her before."
Doremus sprang up, his chair crashing backward on the floor. He was reaching for Shad's throat across the table. Effingham Swan was on him, pushing him back into another chair. Doremus hiccuped with fury. Shad had not even troubled to rise, and he was going on contemptuously:
"Yuh, you two'll have quite some trouble if you try to pull any spy stuff on the Corpos. My, my, Doremus, ain't we had fun, Lindy and you, playing footie-footie these last couple years! Didn't nobody know about it, did they! But what you didn't know was Lindy—and don't it beat hell a long-nosed, skinny old maid like her can have so much pep!—and she's been cheating on you right along, sleeping with every doggone man boarder she's had at the Tavern, and of course with her little squirt of a partner, Nipper!"
Swan's great hand—hand of an ape with a manicure—held Doremus in his chair. Shad snickered. Emil Staubmeyer, who had been sitting with fingertips together, laughed amiably. Swan patted Doremus's back.
He was less sunken by the insult to Lorinda than by the feeling of helpless loneliness. It was so late; the night so quiet. He would have been glad if even the M.M. guards had come in from the hall. Their rustic innocence, however barnyardishly brutal, would have been comforting after the easy viciousness of the three judges.
Swan was placidly resuming: "But I suppose we really must get down to business—however agreeable, my dear clever literary detective, it would be to discuss Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers and Norman Klein. Perhaps we can some day, when the Chief puts us both in the same prison! There's really, my dear Doremus, no need of your troubling your legal gentleman, Mr. Monkey Kitteridge. I am quite authorized to conduct this trial—for quaintly enough, Doremus, it is a trial, despite the delightful St. Botolph's atmosphere! And as to testimony, I already have all I need, both in the good Miss Lorinda's inadvertent admissions, in the actual text of your editorial criticizing the Chief, and in the quite thorough reports of Captain Ledue and Dr. Staubmeyer. One really ought to take you out and shoot you—and one is quite empowered to do so, oh quite!—but one has one's faults—one is really too merciful. And perhaps we can find a better use for you than as fertilizer—you are, you know, rather too much on the skinny side to make adequate fertilizer.
"You are to be released on parole, to assist and coach Dr. Staubmeyer who, by orders from Commissioner Reek, at Hanover, has just been made editor of the Informer, but who doubtless lacks certain points of technical training. You will help him—oh, gladly, I am sure!—until he learns. Then we'll see what we'll do with you! . . . You will write editorials, with all your accustomed brilliance—oh, I assure you, people constantly stop on Boston Common to discuss your masterpieces; have done for years! But you'll write only as Dr. Staubmeyer tells you. Understand? Oh. Today—since 'tis already past the witching hour—you will write an abject apology for your diatribe—oh yes, very much on the abject side! You know—you veteran journalists do these things so neatly—just admit you were a cockeyed liar and that sort of thing—bright and bantering—you know! And next Monday you will, like most of the other ditchwater-dull hick papers, begin the serial publication of the Chief's Zero Hour. You'll enjoy that!"
Clatter and shouts at the door. Protests from the unseen guards. Dr. Fowler Greenhill pounding in, stopping with arms akimbo, shouting as he strode down to the table, "What do you three comic judges think you're doing?"
"And who may our impetuous friend be? He annoys me, rather," Swan asked of Shad.
"Doc Fowler—Jessup's son-in-law. And a bad actor! Why, couple days ago I offered him charge of medical inspection for all the M.M.'s in the county, and he said—this red-headed smart aleck here!—he said you and me and Commissioner Reek and Doc Staubmeyer and all of us were a bunch of hoboes that 'd be digging ditches in a labor camp if we hadn't stole some officers' uniforms!"
"Ah, did he indeed?" purred Swan.
Fowler protested: "He's a liar. I never mentioned you. I don't even know who you are."
"My name, good sir, is Commander Effingham Swan, M.J.!"
"Well, M. J., that still doesn't enlighten me. Never heard of you!"
Shad interrupted, "How the hell did you get past the guards, Fowley?" (He who had never dared call that long-reaching, swift-moving redhead anything more familiar than "Doc.")
"Oh, all your Minnie Mouses know me. I've treated most of your brightest gunmen for unmentionable diseases. I just told them at the door that I was wanted in here professionally."
Swan was at his silkiest: "Oh, and how we did
