“I thought so,” he replied, swallowing hard. “I knew what you would do. But you are in higher hands than mine, Carmen. Go home now, and get ready. You can go down in the morning. And we, Sidney and I, will say nothing of––of your visit to his father.”
That night Hitt called up the Beaubien and asked if he and Haynerd might come and talk with her after the paper had gone to press, and requesting that she notify Carmen and Father Waite. A few hours later the little group met quietly in the humble cottage. Miss Wall and Sidney were with them. And to them all those first dark hours of morning, when as yet the symbol of God’s omnipresence hung far below the horizon, seemed prescient with a knowledge of evil’s further claims to the lives and fortunes of men.
“I have asked you here,” Hitt gravely announced when they were assembled, “to consider a matter which touches us all––how deeply, God alone knows. At ten o’clock to-night I received this message.” He opened the paper which he held in his hand and read:
“‘Property of Hitt oil company, including derricks, pump houses, storage tanks, destroyed by fire. Dynamite in pump houses exploded, causing wells to cave and choke. Loss complete. Wire instructions.’”
The news burst over them like the cracking of a bomb. Haynerd, who, like the others, had been kept in ignorance of the message until now, started from his chair with a loud exclamation, then sank back limp. Carmen’s face went white. Evil seemed to have chosen that day with canny shrewdness to overwhelm her with its quick sallies from out the darkness of the carnal mind.
Hitt broke the tense silence. “I see in this,” he said slowly, “the culmination of a long series of efforts to ruin the Express. That my oil property was deliberately wrecked, I have not the slightest doubt. Nor can I doubt by whose hand.”
“Whose?” demanded Haynerd, having again found his voice. “Ames’s?”
Hitt replied indirectly. “The Express has stood before the world as a paper unique and apart. And because of its high ideals, the forces of evil singled it out at the beginning for their murderous assaults. That the press of this country is very generally muzzled, stifled, bought and paid for, I have good reason now to know. My constant brushes with the liquor interests, with low politicians, judges, senators, and dive-keepers, have not been revealed even to you. Could you know the pressure which the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, has tried to exert upon us, you would scarce credit me with veracity. But the Express has stood out firm against feudalism, mediaevalism, and entrenched ecclesiasticism. It has fearlessly opposed the legalizing of drugging. It has fought the debauching of a nation’s manhood by the legalized sale of a deadly poison, alcohol. And it has fought without quarter the pernicious activity of morally stunted brewers and distillers, whose hellish motto is, ‘Make the boys drink!’ It has fought the money octopus, and again and again has sounded to the world the peril which money-drunken criminals like Ames and his clique constitute. And for that we must now wear the crown of martyrdom!”