This story was set up and printed in the Grover Sentinel late Friday night and was on sale early Saturday morning. At eleven fifty-five P.M. Friday, Neville Markham, butler to Mrs. Agnes Rogers, walked into the police station and confessed to the murder.
“‘The butler did it,”’ said Molly between scornful quotation marks.
“After all,” said John MacVeagh, “I suppose sometime the butler must do it. Just by the law of averages.”
It was Saturday night, and the two of them were sitting in the office talking after the frantic strain of getting out the second extra of the day. Luke Sellers had gone home and gone to bed with a fifth.
“A man can stay a reformed character just so long,” he said, “and you won’t be needing me much for a couple of days. Unless,” he added, “you get any more brilliant inspirations before the fact. Tell me, Johnny, how did you . . . ?” But he let the query trail off unfinished and went home, clutching his fifth as though it were the one sure thing in a wambling world.
The second extra had carried the butler’s whole story: how he, a good servant of the Lord, had endureci as long as he could his mistress’ searching for strange gods until finally a Voice had said to him, “Smite thou this evil woman,” and he smote. Afterward he panicked and tried to make it look like robbery. He thought he had succeeded until Friday night, when the same Voice said to him, “Go thou and proclaim thy deed,” and he went and proclaimed.
MacVeagh wished he’d been there. He’d bet the butler and Chief Hanby had fun swapping texts.
“ ‘The butler did it,’ ” Molly repeated. “And I never so much as mentioned the butler in my stories. You don’t even think of butlers—not since the twenties.”
“Well, anyway, the murder is solved. That’s the main thing. No more pressure from either Hitchcock or Bricker. No more mumbling dissension in Grover.”
“But don’t you feel . . . oh, I don’t know . . . cheated? It’s no fun when a murder gets solved that way. If you and I could’ve figured it out and broken the story, or even if Chief Hanby had cracked it with dogged routine . . . But this way it’s so flat!”
“Weary, flat, and stale, Molly, I agree. But not unprofitable. We learned the truth, and the truth has solved a lot of our problems.”
“Only—”
“Yes, Molly?”
“Only, boss— How? I’ve got to know how. How could you know that the butler was going to hear another Voice and confess? And that isn’t all. Luke told me about General Wigginsby.”
Molly had never seen John MacVeagh look so serious. “All right,” he said. “I’ve got to tell somebody, anyway. It eats at me . . . OK. You remember how Whalen left so abruptly? Well—”
Molly sat wide-eyed and agape when he finished the story. “Ordinarily,” she said at last, “I’d say you were crazy, boss. But Old Man Herkimer and General Wigginsby and the butler . . . What was Whalen—”
MacVeagh had wondered about that too. Sometimes he could still almost feel around the office the lingering presence of that gaunt old man with the books you couldn’t read and the beard that wasn’t there. What had he been?
“And what’re you going to do, boss? It looks like you can do practically anything. If anything we print in the paper turns out to be the truth— What are you going to do?”
“Come in!” MacVeagh yelled, as someone knocked on the door.
It was Father Byrne, followed by a little man whose blue eyes were brightly alive in his old, seamed face. “Good evening, John, Molly. This is Mr. Hasenberg—you’ve probably met him. Used to head the union out at the Hitchcock plant before Tim Bricker moved in.”
“Evening, folks,” said Mr. Hasenberg. He tipped his cap with a hand that was as sensitive and alive as his eyes—the hardened, ready hand of a skilled workman.
MacVeagh furnished his guests with chairs. Then he said, “To what am I indebted and such?”
“Mr. Hasenberg has a problem, John, and it’s mine too. And it’s yours and everybody’s. Go on, sir.”
Mr. Hasenberg spoke in a dry, precise tone. “Bricker’s called a strike. We don’t want to strike. We don’t like or trust Hitchcock, but we do trust the arbitration committee that Father Byrne’s on. We’ve accepted their decision, and we still hope we can get the management to. But Bricker put over the strike vote with some sharp finagling, and that’ll probably mean the Army taking over the plant.”
“And I know Bricker . . .” said MacVeagh. “But where do I come in?”
“Advice and publicity,” said Father Byrne. “First, have you any ideas? Second, will you print the statement Mr. Hasenberg’s preparing on the real stand of the men, without Bricker’s trimmings?”
“Second, of course. First—” he hesitated. “Tell me, Mr. Hasenberg, if you were free of Bricker, do you think you could get the management to come to terms?”
“Maybe. They ain’t all like Hitchcock and Phil Rogers. There’s some of them want to get the stuff out and the war won as bad as we do. Now, ever since Mathers went to Washington, the post of general manager’s been vacant. Suppose, now, Johansen should get that appointment—he’d string along with the committee’s decision, I’m pretty sure.”
MacVeagh pulled a scratch pad toward him. “Johansen— First name?”
“Boss! You aren’t going to—”
“Sh, Molly. And now, Father, if you could give me an outline of the committee’s terms . . .”
So Ingve Johansen became general manager of the Hitchcock plant, and Mr. Hasenberg resumed control of the union, after evidence had been uncovered which totally discredited Tim Bricker, and the arbitrated terms of the committee were accepted by labor and management, and the joint labor-management council got off to a fine start—all of which the burghers of Grover read with great pleasure in the Sentinel.
There was another important paragraph in
