“Ah, the Sinn Feiner! Why, it’s perfect.”
She had a moment of fearful doubt.
“You wouldn’t quote me? There’d be no libel—?”
“My dear lady, I’ve no money to spend on libel suits. I’ll never get mixed up in one. Every bit of my stuff is looked over by a lawyer before it sees the light of print. Don’t you worry. I’d never implicate a lady. Scourging a vampire”—he fell into his grandiloquent press language again—“is an entirely different matter.”
“There’s such a thing as justice,” said Mrs. Thorstad bridling.
He nodded with gravity. They might have been, from their appearance, two kindly middle-aged persons discussing a kindly principle, so well did their faces deceive their minds.
So it happened that the next issue of the ‘Town Reporter’ carried in its headlines on the following day—
WAS MYSTERY OF SUICIDE OF RICH CLUBMAN ENTANGLED
IN FREE LOVE PROBLEM?
There followed an article of subtle insinuation written by the hand of an adept. It crept around the edge of libel, telling only the facts that every one knew, but in such proximity that the train of thought must be complete—that one who knew anything of the people implicated could see that Margaret Duffield (never named) believer in all “doctrines of free madness” had “perhaps preyed upon the soul of the man.” And then after a little the “Sinn Feiner” came into the article, he too coming from groups who knew no “law but license.” Ugly intrigue—all of it—dragging its stain across the corpse of Walter Carpenter.
The news had come to the Flandons at breakfast too. Gage had come down first and picked up the newspaper while he was waiting for Helen and the children. He read it at a glance and the blow made him a little dizzy. Like a flood there came over him the quick sense of the utter blackness of Walter’s mind—more than any sense of loss or pity came horror at the baffled intellect which had caused the tragedy. He stood, reading, moistening his lips as Helen entered and lifted the children to their chairs.