MacVeagh nodded. “I see. We obviously don’t know all the laws. We’re still learning them. And what doesn’t fit in with the little we know—”
“ An event,’ ” the priest read on, “ ‘which cannot be accounted for by any of the known forces of nature and which is, therefore, attributed to a supernatural force.’ So you see, miraculousness is more in the attitude of the beholder than in the nature of the fact.”
“And the logical reaction of a reasonable man confronted with an apparent miracle would be to test it by scientific method, to try to find the as yet unknown natural law behind it?”
“I should think so. Again being careful not to speak as a priest.”
“Thanks, Father.”
“But what brings all this up, John? Don’t tell me you have been hearing voices or such? I’d have more hope of converting an atheist like Jake to the supernatural than a good hard-headed agnostic like you.”
“Nothing, Father. I just got to thinking— Let you know if anything comes of it.”
Philip Rogers was waiting for MacVeagh at the Sentinel office. There was a puzzling splash of bright red on his white cheek. Molly was there, too, typing with furious concentration.
“I want to talk you alone, Johnny,” Rogers said.
Molly started to rise, but MacVeagh said, “Stick around. Handy things sometimes, witnesses. Well, Phil?”
Philip Rogers glared at the girl. “I just wanted to give you a friendly warning, Johnny. You know as personnel manager out at the plant I get a pretty good notion of how the men are feeling.”
“Too bad you’ve never put it over to H. A., then.”
Philip shrugged. “I don’t mean the reds and the malcontents. Let Bricker speak for them—while he’s still able. I mean the good, solid American workers, that understand the plant and the management.”
“H. A.’s company stooges, in short. OK, Phil, so what are they thinking?”
“They don’t like the way you’re playing up this murder. They think you ought to show a little sympathy for the boss in his bereavement. They think he’s got troubles enough with Bricker and the Congressional committee.”
MacVeagh smiled. “Now I get it.”
“Get what?”
“I’d forgotten about the committee. So that’s what’s back of all the hush-hush. A breath of scandal, a suspicion that there might be a murderer in the Hitchcock clan—it could so easily sway a congressman who was trying to evaluate the motives behind H. A.’s deals. He’s got to be Caesar’s wife. Above suspicion.”
“At least,” Philip said scornfully, “you have too much journalistic sense to print wild guesses like that. That’s something. But remember what I said about the men.”
“So?”
“So they might decide to clean out the Sentinel some night.”
MacVeagh’s hand clenched into a tight fist. Then slowly he forced it to relax. “Phil,” he said, “I ought to batter that pallor of yours to a nice, healthy pulp. But you’re not worth it. Tell the company police I’m saving my fists for their vigilante raid. Now get out of here, while I’ve still got sense enough to hold myself back.”
Philip was smiling confidently as he left, but his face was a trifle paler even than usual.
MacVeagh expressed himself with calculated liberty on Philip Rogers’ ancestry, nature, and hobbies for almost a minute before he was aware of Molly. “Sorry,” he broke off to say, “but I meant it.”
“Say it again for me, boss. And in spades.”
“I should have socked him. He—” MacVeagh frowned. “When I came in, it looked as though someone might already have had that pious notion.” He looked at Molly queerly. “Did you—”
“He made a pass at me,” Molly said unemotionally. “He thought maybe he could enlist me on their side that way, keep me from writing my stuff up. I didn’t mind the pass. Why I slapped him was, he seemed to think I ought to be flattered.”
MacVeagh laughed. “Good girl.” He sat down at the other typewriter and rolled in a sheet of copy paper. “Well 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
