But as the afternoon dragged on, McLeod thought it unlikely that the Gunman Chief would receive his message. He had reached the unexpected decision about Mayor Spurgess quite suddenly and now found it almost beyond analysis. He neither liked the mayor nor disliked him. It was not the man who must live, but the symbol.
Symbol? Of what?
McLeod found the idea mildly ridiculous, almost as if he were drumming up trade for the Anti-Newspaper League, self-proselytizing. It wasn't that for the first time in his life, he told himself, he found an intrinsic evil in the newspaper business. It was simply that the system had hit home for the first time, unexpectedly. He had set the machinery in motion for Mayor Spurgess' death; Weaver Wainwright had done the same for him; Overman had decided the Star-Times could not afford to lose his services but could manage without Harry Crippens.
There was no logical connection. If Mayor Spurgess died, that was that. Flowers and a sad song for the widow. But the Wainwright-McLeod-Overman-Crippens problem still remained unsolved. Not to mention Tracy Kent.
Had he become anti-newspaper? The term almost defied definition. The Anti-Newspaper League was one thing, formal, organized, purposeful. But anti-newspaper could mean a lot of things. It could mean slight deviation, non-conformity, the simple desire to earn your keep in some other line. Such a desire was never realized, however. There were only three classes of newspapermen: working reporters, corpses and retired hounds and hens who lived on newspaper farms in old-folk luxury. A newspaperman simply knew too much to be allowed to change his line of work.
No, there was a fourth type. There was the Anti-Newspaper League. What was the old word—Quisling? It referred to politics or some other fields of endeavor, McLeod thought. He wasn't sure what. They were on newspaper payrolls but tried to gum up the works.
Logic was getting him nowhere. He belonged to no cut-and-dry category.
He wanted Mayor Spurgess to live.
Lantrel failed to call by dinner-time or afterwards. At twenty-hundred thirty, McLeod zipped on an insulined jumper, checked his parabeam and went out into the Star-Times snow.