All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [131]
The Judge had had bad luck with his wives, and people felt sorry for him. Both of them sickly for a long time and then had died on his hands. He got a lot of sympathy for that.
But this second wife, I was told, was rich. That explained why the face I called up was not pretty–not the kind of face you would expect to find on Judge Irwin’s wife–but a sallowish, thin face, not even young, with only the big dark eyes to recommend it.
So she had been rich, and that disposed of my notion that back in 1913 or 1914 the Judge had been broke and had stepped over the line. And that made Anne Stanton Happy. Happy because now Adam hadn’t played, even unwittingly, stool pigeon to the Boss. Well, if it made her happy, it made me happy too, I reckoned. And maybe she was happy to think, too, that Judge Irwin was innocent. Well, that would have made me happy too. All I was doing was trying to prove Judge Irwin innocent. I would be able, sooner or later, to go to the Boss and say, “No sale, Boss. He is washed in the Blood.”
“The son-of-a-bitch is washed in whitewash,” the Boss would say. But he’d have to take my word. For he knew I was thorough. I was a very thorough and well-trained research student. And truth was what I sought, without fear or favor. And let the chips fly.
Anyway, I could cross 1913 off the ticket. Anne Stanton had settled that.
Or has she?
When you are looking for the lost will in the old mansion, you tap, inch by inch, along the beautiful mahogany wainscoting, or along the massive stonework of the cellarage, and listen for the hollow sound. Then upon hearing it, you seek the secret button or insert the crowbar. I had tapped and had heard something hollow. Judge Irwin had been broke. “But, oh, no,” Anne Stanton had said, “there is no secret hiding place there, that’s just where the dumb-waiter goes.”
But I tapped again. Just to listen to that hollow sound, even if it was just the place where the dumb-waiter went.
I asked myself: If a man needs money, where does he get it? And the answer is easy: He borrows it. And if he borrows it, he has to give security. What would Judge Irwin have given as security? Most likely his house in Burden’s Landing or his plantation up the river.
If it was big dough he needed, it would be the plantation. So I got in my car and headed up the river for Mortonville, which is the county seat of La Salle County, a big chunk of which is the old Irwin plantation where the cotton grows white as whipped cream and the happy darkies sing all day, like Al Jolson.
In the courthouse at Mortonville, I got hold of the abstract on the Irwin place. There it was, from the eighteenth-century Spanish grant to the present moment. And in 1907, there was the entry: Mortgage, Montague Irwin to Mortonville Mercantile Bank, $42,000, due January 1, 1910. Late in January, 1910, a chunk had been paid, about $12,000 and the mortgage redrawn. By the middle of 1912, interest payments were being passed. In March, 1914, foreclosure proceedings had been instituted. But the Judge had been saved by the bell. In early May there was an entry for the satisfaction of the mortgage in full. No further entries were on the abstract.
I had tapped again, and there was the hollow sound. When a man is broke there is always a hollow sound, like the tomb.
But he had married a rich wife.
But was she rich?
I had only the word of old Cousin Mathilde for that. And the evidence of Mrs. Irwin’s sallow face. I decided to put in the crowbar.