CHAPTER XII

"WIGGLY" PRICE

The local police authority in the village of Ardmore was vested in the person of Mr. Hamilton Griggs, who held the office of constable, and whose most important duty was the enforcement of the municipality's automobile laws. Since the roads were exceptionally good, and since Constable Griggs received a fee of two dollars and fifty cents for each arrest resulting in a collected fine, he found the office fairly lucrative during the touring months.

Constable Griggs--generally called "Ham" by way of brevity--was a widower and occupied with his daughter a neat, green-shuttered cottage on Hudson Street. His police equipment was a high-powered motor cycle, and his most profitable hours of patrol duty were between nightfall and a little past twelve, when automobilists were hurrying over the highways, probably feeling more secure in their breach of law under cover of darkness.

It had been a good night for speeders, and "Ham" Griggs was mightily pleased with himself; an even ten arrests he had made, the fines had all been paid, and the neat sum of twenty-five dollars in fees reposed in a trousers pocket of his khaki uniform. At a quarter of one his motor cycle putt-putted stormily into the yard beside the cottage. He shut off the engine, locked the ignition, and, going to the rear of the house, let himself in through the unlocked kitchen door.

Etta, his daughter, had set out a cold lunch for him, as was her custom, and the constable lost no time in "falling to." With a chuckle of satisfaction he took the little wad of crumpled bills from his pocket and tossed them to the top of the kitchen table, where he might enjoy the sight of them.

"Pretty good," he told himself with a grin. "Let 'em speed!"

There was even further reason for jubilation. During his patrol of the roads within the village's corporate limits, he had found the deserted blue taxi, where Don Haskins, fleeing the New York police, had left it to continue his journey to Greenacres on foot.

Taking the number, he had reported his find to the New York company which controlled an entire fleet of like cabs. There ought to be a ten-spot from the taxi company, the constable told himself. All in all, it had been a most satisfactory night.

Ham Griggs was a heavy-set, dull-faced man of forty-odd; he had, prior to his elevation into public office, been a caretaker for one of the summer homes which border the Hudson River. Having an appetite in proportion to his stalwart build, he ate with a gusty heartiness. When the last chicken bone had been picked clean, he leaned back in the chair, which creaked protestingly on its two rear, straining legs, loosened his belt, and took from inside his uniform cap, always the policeman's cigar cache, a rich-looking Havana which had been the ineffectual peace offering of a gentleman who had been doing forty miles per, when Mr. Griggs halted him.

"Ah!" murmured the constable, puffing deeply. "Betcha this is a twenty-center--mebbe twenty-five." He removed it from his mouth and examined the embossed band with utmost respect. "A smoke like this sure tops off a good feed."

His coat unbuttoned, his thumbs hooked beneath the straps of his wide-webbed suspenders, he continued smoking until the electric light seemed to be swimming in a sea of smoke. And then the telephone rang, a loud, insistent jangling from the front of the cottage. Ham Griggs' chair thudded down on all fours with such force that there was the sound of cracking wood.

"Now I wonder what that is?" he grunted. Ardmore being a quiet, law-abiding community, a night call for the constable was highly unusual. He lumbered hastily to his feet and plunged toward the sitting room, where the telephone was located. The bell was still ringing when he took down the receiver.

"Hello!" he shouted into the transmitter. "Hello there! Dang it, central, quit ringin' in my ear; you'll bust an eardrum!" Possibly in retaliation of this impolite tone, the switchboard operator buzzed again.

"Constable?"

"Yeah, this is Ham Griggs."

"Doctor Bushnell speaking, constable. There's been a tragedy at Greenacres--the Gilmore place, you know. Can you come at once?"

"Whatcha mean--tragedy, doc?"

"There'll be time enough for that when you get here," came the voice of the village physician.

"I gotta right to know," grunted Ham Griggs. "Let's have it." His voice was officially important now. "Y'mean robbery?"

"Worse than that, constable. Oh, I might as well tell you--Kirklan Gilmore's wife has been killed. It is--murder."

"Good Lord, murder!" cried Griggs, his voice rising thunderously loud. "Who killed her, doc? Who done it?"

"That's our job, constable, to find out. You'll come right away?"

"Sure I will. Whatcha think I'm constable for? How--how was she killed?"

"Shot, Griggs; let's not waste any more time talking now." And at the other end of the line the receiver clicked, breaking the connection.

It was not surprising that the persistent ringing of the phone and Ham Griggs' loud-pitched voice should have aroused the constable's daughter, Etta. She appeared in the sitting-room doorway, her hair done up in curlers, her rather plain face a glistening smudge of cold cream.

"What's happened, fawther?" she demanded, her none-too-plump arms hugged tight across her flat chest.

"Ain't I told you to cut out that 'fawther' stuff?" growled Ham Griggs.

"Yes, fawther, but did you say somebody had been murdered?"

"That's the size of it," nodded the constable, beginning to button his coat. "Out to Greenacres--Gilmore's new wife, so Doc Bushnell says."

"My Gawd!" gasped Etta Griggs, momentarily forgetting her little book, "Social English." Etta was ambitious for herself; she was engaged in writing a play, and wished to equip herself to move as one of the elect in literary circles, when the moment of her great success should arrive. "The--the author's wife? Why, they ain't--they haven't been married a month yet! Did he kill her, fawther?"

Ham Griggs was impatient of questions, eager to be off, but his daughter barred the sitting room's one door, and he knew that the only way to pass without absolute violence was to answer her.

"I don't know nothin' 'bout it," he grunted, "except what the doc told me, which was precious little. Seems like she's been shot. I dunno who done it. Now get outta the way, Etta, an' let me get goin'."

"Chances are he did," mused Etta; "we literati are so temperamental, so given to quick, strong passions."

"You just natcherally make me sick!" snorted her father, as he plunged past her. A moment later she heard his motor cycle bark into life and, with staccato explosions from the exhaust, race out of the yard and down the quiet village street.

Etta's rôle in the Greenacres tragedy was more important than one might imagine it could be, and for no greater reason than that she aspired to be a playwright. Her play had reached its fourth and final act; with a few minor corrections here and there, it was ready for its journey to New York. She had not the slightest doubt of its immediate acceptance and production.

She realized in a vague sort of way the power of the newspapers; and, little knowing into how many independent departments a great daily is divided, she was suddenly seized with an idea--a great idea. The murder of Mrs. Gilmore, she reasoned, was news, stupendous news; Kirklan Gilmore was a famous novelist. The newspaper which she read regularly would, as she saw it, naturally feel grateful to her for giving them firsthand information regarding the tragedy. It would serve as a pleasant introduction to the editor of that great metropolitan publication, would tincture the review of her "play" with a personal kindliness.

What queer notions people do get into their heads! But the merit of her idea is neither here nor there; the important thing is that Etta Griggs did call the office of _The Morning Star_, and she was thus responsible for the appearance on the scene of a certain news hound named Jimmy Price, sometimes more intimately known as "Wiggly."

The news-gathering staff of _The Star_ is a high-pressure, hectic organization; one would wonder how they could get out an intelligent paper in the midst of such a mad scramble. It was nearing press time for the final edition; Scoggins, the city editor, was bellowing at the top of his nasal voice; the copy desk was railroading a last batch of late news matter; the assistant make-up man, who is one of the important gentlemen who keep the type in the right columns, was screaming frantically about something of which no one except himself seemed to know anything, and, from the way the office boys were sliding back and forth across the floor, one might have thought the city room was the skating rink of an insane asylum.

And then, with a breathless suddenness--silence! In newspaper parlance, "the paper had been put to bed." From the street below there sounded the blump-blump of a flat-wheeled surface car journeying along Park Row. Scoggins, the city editor, gave a look at his news schedule, sighed, and jerked off the shade which protected his eyes.

"There's not a live piece of local news in the whole darn paper!" he muttered. "Here, Milne, take the desk; I'm going home, and----" He took a last survey around the long, paper-cluttered city room, and saw Jimmy Price, who was cognizant that he had incurred the displeasure of the gods, trying to do a quick sneak out.

"Hey, you, Price!" he bawled.

Jimmy Price turned, and it became apparent why he had been saddled with the nickname of Wiggly. In moments of inner excitement or of strong emotion, Jimmy's protuberant ears became animate objects. They were unruly ears, always wiggling when he least wanted them to; it seemed that Jimmy had absolutely no control over his ears. They were wiggling now, for their owner sensed what was coming. He turned slowly and retraced his steps toward the city editor's desk, which was set up on a platform. The boys called it "the throne," and certainly no monarch ever held more despotic sway than Caleb Scoggins, the city editor of _The Star_.

Scoggins was a good city editor, but he was a man of strong prejudices, and he was prejudiced against Wiggly's animated ears. It annoyed him to look down the room and have a perfectly good idea take sudden flight, as he was forced to stare in fascinated, almost hypnotized, interest at a pair of ears doing a sort of uncanny dance on the side of a man's head, while the owner of those remarkable appendages bent industriously over his typewriter entirely unaware of his innocent havoc. Bob Roddy, the star rewrite man, that high-salaried word slinger, whose supple brain and nimble fingers could paint a column word picture with no more material than a five-line news bulletin, was, likely as not, to be discovered staring, vacant-eyed, at "Wiggly" Price, while the desk was waiting for the rest of his story.

And Jimmy Price was a good reporter, a rattling good one, so good, in fact, that Scoggins had been at a loss for an excuse to fire him. But now he had the excuse.

"Price," he rasped, "you fell down on the Hammerslaw kidnaping case." His voice had the tone of doom, but Wiggly, except for the renewed twitching of his ears, moved neither of body nor tongue. He was too wise to point out that he had registered this one failure to fifty successes, or to remind Scoggins that no reporter can bat a thousand in the news-gathering league.

"Where you belong," went on the city editor with withering sarcasm, "is in a side-show tent, along with the rest of the freaks, not in a newspaper office. As a reporter----" He broke off, as the telephone rang; mechanically he spun half around in his chair and pulled the instrument toward him.

"Yeah?" he grunted.

Etta Griggs had chosen this opportune moment to call.

"Is this the editor of _The Star_?" came her sweetest, most cultured tones over the wire. Scoggins admitted it with a grunt.

"This is Miss Griggs, the playwright, and I am calling to give you a--a scoop, I believe you call it."

Had it been a busy hour, Scoggins would have switched the call over to his assistant; experience had hardened him to persons calling him up to give him a scoop. Usually they didn't pan out, these scoops.

"What is it, Miss Griggs?" he inquired with a deference that he never used toward his staff.

"It--it's very important news," went on Etta Griggs tremulously, almost overwhelmed by the realization that she was in conversation with the great editor of her morning paper. "There has been a murder--a very prominent family, and I thought you might be interested----"

"I should say I am!" exclaimed Scoggins, picking up a pencil and poising it over a sheet of paper. "What did you say the name was?"

"Miss Griggs. I am----"

"Not your name--the murdered person's name."

"Oh, of course! Why, Mrs. Gilmore--the wife of Kirklan Gilmore, the famous novelist, you know."

Now, as a matter of fact, Scoggins didn't know; he didn't read the book reviews, and Gilmore, while he had written a selling book, wasn't quite so famous as Etta imagined.

"You say she has been murdered, Miss Griggs?" he purred. "Where did this happen?" And, waiting for the reply, he put his hand over the transmitter as he said out of the corner of his mouth to Milne, his assistant: "Who the devil is Kirklan Gilmore, the novelist? Get the clippings on him outta the reference room. Picture of his wife, if there are any. Hurry! We gotta stop the presses and make a lift, if this pans out."

"Ardmore--Ardmore-on-the-Hudson," went on Etta. "The Gilmore estate is Greenacres. She was shot--killed. Poor thing, they'd only been married three weeks, too." Scoggins' eyebrows went up. In a flash he visualized the headline, "Bride of Three Weeks Slain."

There followed a few rapid-fire questions in which the city editor had all available information. The constable had been summoned--Etta neglected to state that this constable person was her father--and the village physician, a Doctor Bushnell, was at the house.

"Fine!" exclaimed Scoggins with that inhuman delight with which some city editors receive the news of a crime. "If you will give your name, I will have the business office send you a check, and then----"

"Oh, no!" cried Etta. "But I expect that my play will be coming out soon, and----"

"Certainly--certainly," Scoggins murmured mechanically and snapped the receiver to its hook. "She's a nut," he grunted. "Gotta verify this story before we can use it, but I guess it's safe enough at that. You, Kinsella, call up the Gilmore place, Ardmore, and ask for Doctor Bushnell. You, Roddy, bat out a coupla sticks for a lift on page one, and----" His eyes roved over the now empty city and then back to Wiggly Price, who had withdrawn a few feet from the desk. In the pressure of the moment he forgot that he had been about to fire the reporter with the animated ears; he only remembered that he needed a good reporter for a good story, and that Jimmy Price was a good reporter. He slid open a drawer of the desk and tossed over a roll of bills.

"Here's a hundred dollars for expense money, Price," he snapped crisply. "Gilmore place, Ardmore. Author's wife--bride three weeks--murdered. May have to take taxi. Get pictures--lots of pictures. Gotta hunch this is a good yarn." Wiggly's ears wiggled violently, probably registering his delight that the catastrophe of being fired had been so narrowly and unexpectedly averted, but Caleb Scoggins had turned his vigorous attention to other details of the new story--the only real piece of local news during the night--and he did not notice.

Price grabbed up the expense money and left the city room with discreet swiftness. Less than five minutes later he was in a taxicab, speeding out Broadway toward Greenacres.