An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [281]
However his thoughts might have eventuated on this occasion, they were interrupted by the whirr of a telephone bell.
“Yes, this is Mr. Heit speaking—Wallace Upham of Big Bittern. Why, yes, go on, Wallace—young couple drowned—all right, just wait a minute—”
He turned to the politically active youth who drew a salary from the county under the listing of “secretary to the coroner”—”Get these points, Earl.” Then into the telephone: “All right, Wallace, now give me all the facts—everything—yes. The body of the wife found but not that of the husband—yes—a boat upset on the south shore—yes—straw hat without any lining—yes—some marks about her mouth and eye—her coat and hat at the inn—yes—a letter in one of the pockets of the coat—addressed to who?—Mrs. Titus Alden, Biltz, Mimico County—yes—still dragging for the man’s body, are they?—yes—no trace of him yet—I see. All right, Wallace— Well—I’ll tell you, Wallace, have them leave the coat and hat just where they are. Let me see—it’s two-thirty now. I’ll be up on the four o’clock. The bus from the inn there meets that, doesn’t it? Well, I’ll be over on that, sure— And, Wallace, I wish you’d write down the names of all present who saw the body brought up. What was that?—eighteen feet of water at least?—yes—a veil caught in one of the rowlocks—yes—a brown veil—yes—sure, that’s all— Well, then have them leave everything just as found, Wallace, and I’ll be right up. Yes, Wallace, thank you— Goodbye.”
Slowly Mr. Heit restored the receiver to the hook and as slowly arose from the capacious walnut-hued chair in which he sat, stroking his heavy whiskers, while he eyed Earl Newcomb, combination typist, record clerk, and what not.
“You got all that down, did you, Earl?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, you better get your hat and coat and come along with me. We’ll have to catch that 3:10. You can fill in a few subpoenas on the train. I should say you better take fifteen or twenty—to be on the safe side, and take the names of such witnesses as we can find on the spot. And you better call up Mrs. Heit and say ‘taint likely I’ll be home for dinner tonight or much before the down train. We may have to stay up there until tomorrow. You never can tell in these cases how they’re going to turn out and it’s best to be on the safe side.”
Heit turned to a coatroom in one corner of the musty old room and extracted a large, soft-brimmed, straw hat, the downward curving edges of which seemed to heighten the really bland and yet ogreish effect of his protruding eyes and voluminous whiskers, and having thus equipped himself, said: “I’m just going in the sheriff’s office a minute, Earl. You’d better call up the Republican and the Democrat and tell ‘em about this, so they won’t think we’re slightin’ ‘em. Then I’ll meet you down at the station.” And he lumbered out.
And Earl Newcomb, a tall, slender, shock-headed young man of perhaps nineteen, and of a very serious, if at times befuddled, manner, at once seized a sheaf of subpoenas, and while stuffing these in his pocket, sought to get Mrs. Heit on the telephone. And then, after explaining to the newspapers about a reported double drowning at Big Bittern, he seized his own blue-banded straw hat, some two sizes too large for him, and hurried down the hall, only to encounter, opposite the wide-open office door of the district attorney, Zillah Saunders, spinster and solitary stenographer to the locally somewhat famous and mercurial Orville W. Mason, district attorney. She was on her way to the auditor’s office, but being struck by the preoccupation and haste of Mr. Newcomb, usually so much more deliberate, she now called: “Hello, Earl. What’s the rush? Where you going so fast?”
“Double drowning up at Big Bittern, we hear. Maybe something worse. Mr. Heit’s going up and I’m going along. We have to make that 3:10.”
“Who said so? Is it anyone from here?”
“Don’t know yet, but don’t think so. There was a letter in the girl’s pocket addressed to some one in Biltz, Mimico County, a Mrs. Alden. I’ll tell you when we get back or I’ll telephone you.”
“My goodness, if it’s a crime, Mr. Mason