The Dark Farewell (2 page)
“The philosophers say that knowledge is power.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s the fastest way to get punched in the nose.”
Both Amy and Julian laughed at that, and Flynn realized that he probably seemed a little hot under the collar.
Julian nodded pleasantly and sauntered away to the smoking room cum library.
“What in the blue blazes was
that
?” Flynn inquired of Amy as she led him up the staircase.
She laughed but it sounded forced. “
That
is The Magnificent Belloc. He’s a spirit medium.”
“You’re joking.”
Amy shook her head. “He’s giving a show over at the Opera House every night this week except
Friday and Sunday. Friday the high school is putting on
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
”
“Spiritualism,” Flynn said in disgust. He came from a long line of staunch Irish Protestants.
“Oh sure, there are a lot of fakes and phonies around. But the war changed a lot of people’s feelings about spiritualism and mediums,” Amy said. “When you lose someone dear to you, well, I guess you’d do anything to be able to talk to them one more time.”
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Josh Lanyon
Flynn glanced at her and then glanced away. “I guess so.”
“I don’t put stock in spirits and that sort of thing, but from what I hear young Julian has a knack for knowing things.”
“I’ll bet.”
Amy said mildly, “He called it right with you. I didn’t tell him your first name was David or that you were a newspaperman.”
“No, you didn’t. But you did mention it to Mrs. Hoyt and her daughter.” Flynn added dryly, “I’m
guessing that The Magnificent Belloc’s bedroom is the one over the parlor. Is that right?”
Amy looked chagrined. “That’s right.”
“I thought so. That kid’s as phony as a three dollar bill.”
“Oh, he’s not so bad. A bit of a pansy, I guess. It’s the old man I don’t like. Whatever that boy is or isn’t, it’s that old frog’s fault.”
Flynn didn’t argue with her, but he didn’t agree either. Devereux younger wasn’t anyone’s victim. He recognized that jaded look. Whatever the racket was, The Magnificent Belloc was in it up to his shell-like ears.
Amy continued up the narrow staircase to the second level. Flynn’s room was in the former servant’s
quarters on the far side of the house’s breezeway. The roofed, open-sided passageway between the house and the garage was on the east side of the corner property, the “cool” side shaded by a big walnut tree, but there was nothing cool about that sunny box of a room that afternoon.
After Amy left, Flynn unpacked and then washed up next door in the closet-sized bathroom that had
once served as a storage room.
Back in his room, he changed his shirt and examined himself closely in the square mirror over the
highboy. What had that punk seen? Dark, wavy hair, blue eyes, strong chin and straight nose. Regular features. He was a regular guy. He looked all right. He looked like everybody else. Girls liked him fine.
That girl, Joan, she didn’t see anything wrong with him.
He shook his head impatiently at the troubled-looking Flynn in the mirror.
It didn’t matter what that pansy thought or didn’t think. Flynn didn’t have to have anything to do with him. He was going to get his story and then he’d be heading back to New York City where people had a little discretion, a little subtlety.
He could smell fresh coffee and frying ham, and he followed the aroma downstairs where his fellow
boarders were having a big noontime dinner of fried eggs, ham, sausage and golden brown potatoes.
“Luncheon” they called it in New York, although you wouldn’t get anything like this for lunch.
Flynn took a seat at the table across from Joan. He noticed—to his relief—that the disturbing Julian was absent. There was a lively discussion going on about the recent murders in the neighboring county.
10
The Dark Farewell
“Perhaps someone could ask the Comte about them,” Joan said, with a self-conscious look in Flynn’s
direction.
Doctor Pearson snorted. The older Devereux was shaking his head.
“Who’s the Comte?” Flynn asked.
“The Comte de Mirabeau. Julian’s spirit guide,” Joan replied primly. “He was a French statesman,
orator and writer. He died during the French Revolution.”
“You’re not a believer, young man,” Devereux said severely, watching Flynn.
“I believe in plenty of things,” Flynn said. “What did you have in mind?”
“Julian is a medium,” Joan said.
“A medium what?”
Mrs. Hoyt gave a breathy laugh and scooped up a mouthful of eggs.
The conversation briefly languished, and Flynn decided to ask about the trials of the miners accused of murder last year and the winter. That revived the discussion, but mostly what he heard about was how the KKK and the local ministers were trying to persuade the government and the law to do something about the bootleggers and their roadhouses springing up like toadstools. The massacre was old news. It appeared nobody wanted to think about it.
Astonishingly, these civilized, decent folk seemed to think the best bet for the lawlessness plaguing their county was the Ku Klux Klan. Flynn found it hard to credit. He kept his mouth shut for the most part and listened.
“Thank goodness for Prohibition!” exclaimed Mrs. Hoyt, shoveling in fried potatoes.
Dr. Pearson shot back, “The only thing Prohibition helps is the gangsters and the damned Ku Klux
Klan.”
“It’s kept a lot of boys off the liquor,” insisted Mrs. Hoyt thickly.
“Ah baloney,” growled the old doctor. “More of those kids are trying booze out now than they were
before Prohibition. Forbidding it makes drink seem exciting.”
“That’s because the sheriffs don’t enforce the law!”
Amy said to Flynn, “Mrs. Hoyt is right about that. We’ve got a poor excuse for a sheriff. He’s great pals with half the bootleggers in the county.”
“I’m surprised that you, a doctor, would take that view,” Mrs. Hoyt said to Pearson. She seemed
indignant, but Flynn had the idea this was not a new argument in this household.
Pearson was unmoved. “When drink was legal these kids weren’t allowed in a saloon, but these
damned bootleggers don’t care who they sell their hooch to or who they sucker into gambling away their paychecks. Why, I was tending a poor kid over in Murphysboro just last week who died of that damned
bathtub gin.”
Joan’s gaze met Flynn’s and slid away.
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Josh Lanyon
“But that’s exactly what the Klan and the ministers are saying,” Mrs. Hoyt insisted. “If the law won’t clean this mess up, then the people have to.”
Devereux chimed in, “People? Which people? A bunch of anti-union kleagles and clowns dressed up
in spooky robes doing their mumbo-jumbo and burning crosses out in somebody’s pasture.”
The old guy sounded pretty heated. Flynn was willing to bet that with their complexion and coloring, he and the kid had been mistaken for Italians or worse on more than one occasion.
“You’re a fine one to talk about mumbo-jumbo,” Mrs. Hoyt said tartly.
Devereux bridled. “I assure you, Madame, Spiritualism is as valid and respectable a religion as any
other. We simply believe that the door between this world and the next is accessible to those who hold the key, and that through the talents of one gifted with the power to communicate with spirits, we may learn and be advised by our loved ones who have gone before us.”
“Speaking of those gone before us,” Flynn remarked, “I see your grandson isn’t at lunch.”
“Julian rests in the afternoon,” the old man said stiffly. “He is not strong, and his efforts to act as conduit to the other side tax him greatly.”
Flynn managed to control his expression. Just.
There was not a lot of chat after that. When the meal was finished, Flynn excused himself and went
back to his room. He wanted to start looking around the town as soon as possible.
He found he had a visitor. Julian Devereux was seated on the bed, idly flipping through his copy of
Bertram Cope’s Year
. Flynn had left the book in his Gladstone.
He paused in the doorway, the hair on the back of his neck rising on end. “What are you doing in
here?” he asked sharply.
Julian jumped—so much for psychic powers—though his smile was confident. He tossed the book on
the green and white Irish chain quilt, leaned back on his hands.
“I thought we should get to know each other, David.”
Flynn studied Julian’s finely chiseled features coldly, taking in the angular, wide mouth and heavy-
lidded, half-amused dark eyes.
“Why’s that?”
Julian arched one eyebrow. “You know.”
“No, I don’t. And I’m pretty sure I don’t want to.”
Julian tilted his head, as though listening to an echo he couldn’t quite place. “I didn’t figure you for the shy type,” he said eventually.
“I’m not. I’m not your type either.” Flynn was careful not to look at the book on the bed. “Now if you don’t mind—?” He held the door open pointedly.
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The Dark Farewell
A look of disbelief crossed Julian’s face. He rose from the bed and slowly moved to the door. For an instant he stood before Flynn. He was so slight, so lithesome that Flynn kept picturing him shorter than he was. In fact, he was as tall as Flynn, his doe-like dark eyes gazing directly into the other man’s.
“Have it your way,” he said.
“I intend to.”
“But if you should change your mind—”
Flynn inquired dryly, “Wouldn’t The Magnificent Belloc be the first to know?”
13
Chapter Two
“Those scabs and strikebreakers got what they asked for.” That was the view of big Tom McCarty.
“Bullets and pick handles?”
Flynn was genuinely curious about that kind of reasoning, and McCarty’s weathered face tightened.
He was a young mine hoisting engineer with powerful arms and shoulders, a long-time member of the
United Mine Workers. He didn’t say he had been at Crenshaw Crossing or Harrison Woods. He didn’t say he hadn’t been. “The miners were striking for safe working conditions and decent wages. They deserve that. Anybody deserves that. But Lester and the other mine owners shipped in them strikebreakers and scabs and gave away the striking miners’ jobs. I stand by what I say. They deserve what they got.”
There were mutters of agreement from the other men at Skeltcher’s Tavern. Except that Skeltcher’s
wasn’t a tavern anymore. Theoretically it was a soft drink parlor. Every town, every wide-spot-in-the-road now had a small, weather-beaten saloon currently known as a soft drink parlor though the clientele hanging around those joints didn’t much look like sody pop drinkers to Flynn.
“What about these stories about cutting the throats of the wounded men?”
“Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, pal.”
“I won’t,” Flynn said gravely.
An older man with the cough that came from too many years of cigarettes—or coal dust—chimed in,
“If rich, blood-sucking mine owners like Lester get away with using thugs and scabs to break a strike down here in a union stronghold, then the UMWA and the other unions are finished in this country.”
McCarty agreed. “Those miners were acquitted by a jury—two juries—of their peers. That’s justice.”
Flynn nodded politely and stood McCarty to another “root beer”. Maybe it wasn’t justice, but it
seemed to be raw democracy in action. Flynn had read the trial reports and one thing was clear—local sympathy had been clearly and unwaveringly with the miners. An initial inquest concluded that all the strikebreakers were killed by unknown individuals, and recommended that Southern Illinois Coal Company and its officers be investigated in order to affix appropriate responsibility on them. Eventually two trials were held, the first on November 7, 1922, the second that very same winter. Only six men had been
indicted for the massacre, and both trials ended in acquittals for all the defendants. At that point the prosecution had given it up as a lost cause. The remaining indictments were dismissed. The prosecutor had summed up the defense’s case as “These men were justified in what they did; and besides, they didn’t do it!”
The Dark Farewell
You could still hear the echo of that sentiment in Skeltcher’s soft drink parlor. It was like the entire town of Herrin, maybe Williamson County, were suffering from a kind of hysterical blindness and couldn’t see what the rest of the world saw. Old General Black Jack Pershing himself had shown up in Marion and pronounced the massacre as “wholesale murder as yet unpunished.”
And that was very much the mind Flynn had been in when he had boarded the train in New York.
How could it be anything else? But listening to these men talk he was startled at their certainty, their lack of remorse, their continuing and abiding anger at the rich men who they believed had forced them to take violent action. Little as he liked it, Flynn couldn’t help but suspect there was a grain of truth in the miner’s comments about whether Lester and the other mine owners would ever be held to account for the unsafe working conditions in their properties or the men killed in the explosions in their mines.
It was still early when Flynn left Skeltcher’s. His thoughts were restless, and he wasn’t ready to return to the stuffy quiet of the boarding house, wasn’t ready to hear more about how the KKK was going to save western civilization, wasn’t ready to talk to Amy about Gus. Instead he walked along the mostly empty streets trying to reorganize his thoughts, trying to quell his own turbulent needs.
It was all the fault of that young fakir, the sham mentalist with the lithe body and ancient eyes. That kind of thing was dangerous even in New York where people were cosmopolitan and sophisticated and