20  

THIS TURN OF EVENTS HIT ME where it hurt most. Why oh why hadn’t I seen it coming? Cartwright was blocked from causing me grievous harm himself, or Jared’s men would do the same to him. But it became something terribly different if some third party—say, the Chicago gambling mob—were to target me. And the Windy City underworld style in these things was to make it perfectly plain who had done the target practice; it was a matter of bragging rights. No, Cartwright would be in the clear, and with twenty-twenty hindsight I saw how he was getting there. In the Purity when he squared off against me, the boxing stance I instinctively adopted not only set him back on his heels, it set him to thinking. It had taken him a while, but he figured out who that reminded him of, and a trip to the library refreshed his memory of a certain boxer who had been lightweight champion of the world and, worse, fitted me into the picture: the fixed fight, Casper’s well-known fate at the hands of the gamblers, and the gossip in the sporting circles Cartwright drew on for his column, that the other Llewellyn brother had got away but if the mob ever caught up with him, it was curtains.

And that did not even include a notorious World Series bet that had fleeced the same gambling crowd a second time. I was a dead man twice over, if Cartwright tipped them off to my whereabouts.

“You look green around the gills,” observed Sandison. “Anything a poor librarian can do to help?”

“I’ll—I’ll let you know, Sandy.” I got to my feet, trying not to totter. “I have to think.”

I went straight upstairs and dropped flat on the bed. The prone position maybe did not promote thinking, but it at least kept me from acting on my first impulse, which was to get on the next train out of town. Not for the first time had I come to this point of decision. You would think self-preservation made the choice definite, yet running was not the ready answer it had been too often in the past. Lying there, the ceiling of the manse over me like some blank plaster map, I thought of all I would be leaving behind for good. Grace. Sandison. Jared and Rab. Russian Famine. Armbrister and the newsroom. And Butte itself. This tortured, boastful, inventive, grudge-ridden, wisecracking city built not upon bedrock but copper ore was impossible to banish, like some wayward family member you can’t help but keep in touch with. If Butte fairly often got under everyone’s skin, including mine, the heart is located there as well as the spleen. Not to mention the red blood. No, there had to be some other answer than steel rails for the mortally tight spot I was in. If only I could come up with it.

•   •   •

They were waiting for me when I reached the Thunder newsroom the next day. Through the cubbyhole office’s pane of glass I could see Armbrister looking agitated, Jared determined, Rab tense as a cat.

“Are your ears burning?” Jared said the instant I stepped in, their eyes fixed on me. “We’ve been trying our double damnedest to figure something out.” Union leader, publisher, senator, all his burdens of command weighed on his words. “Such as, how come you lost your touch at writing rings around Cartwright all of a sudden.”

“I’ve spent a sleepless night on that myself,” I replied tonelessly.

“Cutlass, pah,” Rab said with contempt. “I’d call him something else.”

“Purple-prose bastard,” Armbrister provided in the next breath. Even more wound up than usual, he paced behind his desk as if caged. “Not to excuse what he’s been doing to Morgie lately, but the SOB has been a show-off right from the start. Christamighty, I was just a cub reporter in Denver when his Rough Riders dispatch came in, and I’ll never forget it. ‘Outlined against a tropical azure sky,’” he parroted, “‘they rode like horsemen of the Apocalypse, not four in number but a cavalry charging into history, wreaking destruction and defeat on the Cuban forces atop San Juan Hill.’ It made every front page in America.” He stopped short, green gaze leveled at the other three of us. “The hell of it is, I’d have run the damn thing, too, that fast,” he said with a snap of his fingers. “Anyway, that’s what we’re up against and we’d better quit beating around the bush and figure out—”

“Say that again,” I blurted. “Back there at the start.”

“What, purple-prose—”

“No, the other. The lede.”

Armbrister looked at me askance, but recited it again. “If you’re trying to pick up some tricks from him, it’s a little late.”

I let that pass. Jared stirred, patience at an end, Rab biting her lip against what was coming. “Let’s get to the main thing. Go ahead, Jacob, you came up with it.”

A picture of reluctance, Armbrister hesitated in facing around to me but said what he had to. “Cutlass outguesses your every move lately. If it were checkers, you’d be cleaned off the board. Are you thinking what we are?”

“Inescapably,” I sighed.

Veteran of journalistic shenanigans that he was, he spelled it out. “No one is that good a guesser, not even this Cutthroat bird. Somebody’s tipping off the Post.”

“Snitching, I’d call that,” said Rab indignantly.

“Spying,” Jared bleakly defined it.

Armbrister swore a short blue streak, then threw up his hands in frustration. “How can it be? I handpicked the entire staff.” Through the office window he scanned the newsroom, every man and woman head down at their tasks, trying to picture to himself who out there amid the busy typewriters and jangling phones of news gathering—stalwart Cavaretta, Sibley the go-getter, coy Mary Margaret Houlihan, Matthews the old hand on rewrite, twenty others—could conceivably be the traitor. Very slowly he turned to Jared. “I ought to have my tongue scraped for saying this, but it needs to be said. Everyone but Morgie here.”

•   •   •

The Scarlet Pimpernel moment again. Myself rewritten. Only, this time the secret existence, the hidden identity, stands forth in a far different light. This time the chameleon on the barber pole, in Grace’s unfortunately immortal phrase, is shown to be desperately trying to save his skin, as it were. How many pages back in the chronicle of time does such a mask, as dramatically alluring to don as those of tragedy and comedy, have to be put on? Merely to the chapter break after the episode in the Purity Cafeteria, when quicker than the eye can follow on the page, the chameleon gets cold feet and turns a subdued color. Cartwright is contacted, a price is named, a deal done, and the Thunder’s editorials take a dive, in boxing parlance. Always intriguing to see oneself cast in a new role.

•   •   •

Ah, well. Enough of make-believe. I faced my jury of three—Armbrister edgy, Jared alert, Rab frozen—and spoke from the heart. “I hope no one really thinks that I spend part of my time writing my soul out for the Thunder, and the other part slipping information that makes me look like a fool.”

“There, see?” Rab couldn’t contain herself. “Morris Morgan is a better man than that, I’d bet my life on it.”

Jared did not go that far, but he was earnest in his verdict. “Relax, Professor. Even you aren’t that much of a Houdini.”

“I didn’t mean to accuse you,” Armbrister backtracked in a mutter, “it just drives me up the wall that anybody in this newsroom is in cahoots with Cartwright.”

“Thank you for the votes of confidence,” I said without irony. “Besides, I know who our informer is.”

There was a moment of silent goggling at me, before Armbrister beat Jared and Rab to speech. “Why in the name of Pete didn’t you say so? Just point the finger. I’ll fire whoever it is so fast he won’t know what hit him.”

I drew the deepest breath possible. “Unfortunately, the solution isn’t that simple.”

It fell to Jared to ask: “Why not?”

“Because . . . because . . .”—the words did not want to come—“the spy is Russian Famine.”