CHAPTER XXXIII
THE BATTLE OF THE HEADLINES
Hampstead was determined not to show the white feather. The morning after the discovery of the diamonds in his box, he made the effort to go about his daily duties unconcernedly and even happily, with a smile of confidence upon his face. His bearing was to proclaim his innocence. But it would not work. Crowds gaped. Individuals stared. Reporters hounded. The very people who needed his help and had been accustomed to receive it gratefully, appeared to shrink from his presence. At the homes where he called, an atmosphere of restraint and artificiality was created. He tried to thaw this and failed dismally; it was evident that the recipients of his attentions also tried, but also failed, for all the while their doubts peeped out at him.
After half a day the minister gave up and sat at home—immured, besieged, impounded. He was like a man upon a rock isolated by a deluge, the waters rolling horizon-wide and surging higher with every edition of the newspapers.
Oh, those newspapers! John Hampstead had not realized before how much of modern existence is lived in the newspapers. So amazingly skillful were they in sweeping away his public standing that the process was actually interesting. He found himself absorbed by it, viewing it almost impersonally, like a mere spectator, moved by it, swayed to one side or the other, as the record seemed to run. The description of the scene in the vault room, even as it appeared unembellished in Haggard's paper, overwhelmed him.
"It is the manner of a thief hopelessly guilty," he confessed.
On the other hand, when Haggard's paper in an editorial asked argumentatively: "Why should this man steal? What need had he for money in large sums?" John's judgment approved the soundness of such a defense. "There were a score," affirmed the editorial, "perhaps a hundred men who had and would freely supply Doctor Hampstead with all the money necessary for the exigencies of the work to which he notoriously devoted all his time. As for his personal needs, the man lived simply. He had no wants beyond his income."
"True—perfectly true. A good point that," conceded Hampstead to himself.
But that evening one of the San Francisco papers reported that at about the time the diamonds were stolen, the Reverend Hampstead had approached various persons in Oakland with a view to borrowing a large sum of money without stating for what the money was required. The paper volunteered the conjecture that the minister, through speculation in stocks, had overdrawn some fund of which he was a trustee, and of which he was presently to be called upon to give an accounting; hence the desperate resort to the theft of the diamonds and the temporary holding of them in his vault, boldly counting on his own immunity from suspicion.
This conjecture was extremely damaging. It skillfully suggested a logical hypothesis upon which the minister could be assumed to be a thief; and so high had been the man's standing that some such hypothesis was necessary.