CHAPTER XXII
Duncan Mallison pushed the little swinging gate open with his knee and sauntering across to the City desk, threw a bundle down upon it.
“Why, hello, Dunc! Back?”
“Hi, there, Dunc!”
Several heads bent above typewriters raised long enough to call across a word of greeting. Charley Munns, City Editor of the Calgary Blizzard, his desk heaped high with an amazing mass of papers, glanced up with a detached query in his harassed young blue eyes.
“Well?”
Mallison proceeded to untie the string about his package. Munns glanced at the first of the pictures, jerked his chin out and looked again. Mallison showed the second and then, slowly, the third. Munns had pushed back the heap of papers. Pipe in hand, tired young blue eyes suddenly bright and alert, he examined the remarkable sketches. An interested group had gathered at the back of the city editor’s chair, and the sketches passed from hand to hand. Mallison who had, without words, merely laid the package of sketches before his city editor, continued reticent when questioned by the staff.
“Whose work was it? Where had he got them? Had they been exhibited? What were they doing in Calgary?” and so forth.
Oh, they were the work of a friend of his. Didn’t matter who. None of them knew his name. No, they hadn’t been exhibited.
Then he sat him down by the “Chief’s” desk, hugged his chin, and stared gloomily before him. The men were back at their desks, and Munns signed some slips, and then turned his attention back to his reporter.
“Good work. Typical Stoneys, eh? Don’t know who your friend is, Dunc, but it is worth two sticks—more if you’re personally interested. By the way, about P. D.? How’d you come out?”
The city editor had picked up again one of the sketches and was examining it interestedly. It was of a young girl, standing on the top of a hill, her horse, reins dropped, behind her, its mane blowing in the wind. She was in breeks, with a boy’s riding boots and her sweater was a bright scarlet. On her head was a black velvet tam. Something in the wide-eyed dreaming look of the girl, as if she were gazing across over an immense distance, seeing probably hills yet higher than the one on which she stood, with the clear blue skies as her only background, held the attention of the jaded city editor.
“That’s really great. Fine! Who’s the girl, by the way?”
“Hilda McPherson.”
“Oh ho!”
Mallison pulled out the slat of the desk, rested his elbows upon it, and began talking. As he talked, his city editor’s eyes returned time and again to the sketches, and suddenly he ejaculated:
“Hello! What’s this?”
Absently turning over the sketches, the photograph of Cheerio was suddenly revealed. Charley Munns’ brows were puckering. One other talent this man possessed. An almost uncanny gift of memory. It was said of him that he never forgot a face once seen.
“Half a mo’!”
He had swung around a rackety file, that revolved on low wheels. Digging into it, he presently found the “obit” that he sought, and slapped down upon the desk a pile of press clippings, duplicate of the photograph which the reporter had found at O Bar O, and a concise, itemised description of the man in question.
Editor and reporter scanned the story swiftly. There was no question now as to the identity of the man at O Bar O. Cheerio’s obit read like a romance. Son and heir of Lord Chelsmore, he had left his art studios in Italy to return to England, there to enlist as a common soldier in the ranks. Among those missing in France, posthumous honors had been bestowed upon him. Soon after this, his father had died, and his younger brother had succeeded to the title and estates and had married his former fiancée.
Charley Munns glanced through the various clippings, nodded his head, and slapped them back into the big manila envelope.
“I think you’ve stumbled across a big thing,” he said. “This man is probably the real Lord Chelsmore. Find out just what he’s doing up here. Not only a good news story here, but a fine feature story, if you want to do it.”
But the reporter was staring out angrily before him. Certain instincts were warring within him. He wanted to shove his knees under that typewriter desk and begin pounding out a story that would proclaim Cheerio’s secret to the world. But a feeling of compunction and shame held him back.
After all, the fellow had a right to his own secret. He had been darned nice to the reporter. Was a darned good friend. Mallison’s mind went back to those long, pleasant Sundays, when they had talked and smoked together. He recalled a day, when with a friendly smile, Cheerio had tossed from his horse into Mallison’s arms a fine haunch of venison. A man couldn’t buy venison from the Indians, nor, at that time, could he shoot deer. The Indians alone had that right, and while they were not permitted to sell venison to the white men, there was no law to prevent them from making gifts of the desired meat. Nor was there any law that prevented the white man returning the compliment with a bag of sugar or a can of molasses or whatever sweet stuff the red man might demand. Cheerio remarked that he had no use for the venison at the ranch house and the stuff was a hanged sight better cooked over a camp fire, so “There you are, old man. One minute, and I’ll give you a hand.”
He had built the fire and he had cut up and broiled the venison, and he had spread it thickly with O Bar O butter, and with a friendly grin, he had dished it out to the camper.
Mallison felt himself shrivelling under a mean pang. It was a dirty trick to have taken the sketches, though Mallison proposed to show them to certain prominent folk of Calgary who might help the fellow who was a ranch hand. He had not intended to exploit his friend. He had a good enough story about P. D., and he had been sent to “cover” P. D. and the chess game. So why——
His chair scraped the floor. He leaned heavily across the city desk.
“I say, Chief, I don’t need to find out what he’s doing up here. I know. He’s up here so’s not to stand in the way of his brother’s happiness. That’s how I dope it out. And he’s a darned good sort, and I’m hanged if I want the job of writing a story like that. He’s a friend of mine, and it’d be a scurvy trick. It’s none of our dashed business, anyway.”
“It’s a good newspaper story,” said the city editor without emphasis.
“Oh, I dunno. Who gives a hang in this country about an Englishman? You can dig up a dozen stories like that any day up here in Alberta.”
“Maybe you can.”
Charley Munns answered five telephone calls in succession, signed two slips brought to him by a boy, read a telegram, called an assignment across to a reporter who rose from his typewriter and made an instant exit, and then turned back to the gloomy Mallison at his elbow. A grin twisted the city editor’s mouth, and a humorous twinkle lighted up his tired eyes.
“Suit yourself, Dunc. Give’s a column, then, about old P. D. and the chess, and run a few of the Indian pictures and the one of the old man—the one with the pipe and the hat. Cut out the Cheerio man, then. If he’s satisfied where he is, let him stay—among those missing. We should worry.”
Duncan Mallison grinned delightedly.
“Thanks! I’ll tell him what you said.”