Mignon

Chapter 8

That didn’t get rid of the fact I had what I’d hoped to get, and as soon as I got back to my suite I worked like a wild man for the next couple of hours putting the scraps together. It wasn’t too hard a job, once I got system in it. My first gain came when I realized that pieces along the outside must have a straight edge. By studying the ones with lines and other ones without, I was able to figure out which scraps went at the top, which ones at the sides, and which ones at the bottom. When I laid them out on my escritoire blotter, I came up with kind of a frame around a blank space in the middle. Now finding edges that fitted edges was just a question of patience, and pretty soon I had all the pieces in place. Then I got out my gum arabic, the little bottle I had in my draftsman’s kit, and with that glued them in place, using hotel stationery as backing. At last I could read what they said, and it was damning so far as Burke was concerned. Because it was not only a trial draft, as I had hoped it might turn out to be. It was that, but it was also a translation from proper English, such as Burke always used, into dumb lingo, the kind an illiterate writes. In other words, on odd lines was a note, decently spelled and punctuated, giving details of the shoe shipment, while on even lines, under words to correspond, was the rough, misspelled printing of a pretended ignoramus, even to the signature LORL PATROT — everything in exactly the same style as the note I’d seen at headquarters.

I was plenty excited about it, but had to figure how to use it, and went down to the lobby to think. The point was that though I could name the informer, I couldn’t disprove his evidence if the Army insisted on believing it meant anything, and I kept telling myself Burke was incidental; the main thing was Mr. Landry and how to get him out. And then I suddenly saw that my tactic lay not in fine points of what proved what, but in taking the fun out of the Army’s self-righteous zeal for the sport of human sacrifice.

In a seat beside me watching the theater crowd enter was a newspaperman, John Russell Young, who wrote for a Philadelphia paper. After a moment or two he beckoned and another reporter, Olsen, who wrote for New England papers, came over. Young was just a boy, but Olsen was in his thirties, a bit seedy, with yellow paper stuffed in his pocket and a kind of hatchet face that squinted all the time. I halfway knew them both, and spoke; I couldn’t help hearing what they said. It seemed Young was taking a trip to field headquarters on the Teche and wanted Olsen to cover him here in return for copies of the Franklin dispatches. They fixed it up quick, then Young said: “Olsen, there’s one thing I’m having a look at, and that’s the camp followers they have out there — the bevy of colored girls who cook for the boys, as I hear, and press their pants, and do their laundry — and what else, would you say?”

“I couldn’t imagine,” said Olsen.

“I mean to find out,” said John Russell Young.

That’s when I remembered Dan’s panic at what the press might hear. I leaned over and interrupted: “Mr. Olsen, how’d you like it if I had a story for you?”

“I’d like it fine, Mr. Cresap. What story?”

“About a client of mine, falsely accused.”

“Not Adolphe Landry, by any chance?”

“I see you keep up with things.”

“Keeping up is my business. But how is he falsely accused? The way they tell it at headquarters, he’s practically a one-man Q.M. for Dick Taylor’s Army.”

“They tell it their own way,” I said, pretty grim, “but if you’d like to hear it my way, why don’t you have breakfast with me tomorrow, and I’ll have it all lined up.”

“Fine. Around eight-thirty, shall we say?”

“I’ll be expecting you then.”

I put in a call for 7:30, then went up and went back to work. I wrote a letter to the Commanding General, asking dismissal of the case on the ground of plain reason, but putting in other stuff too, like the motives the Army might have in being unduly severe, and other things the press could be interested in. I made two copies, and turned, in around 1:30. In the morning, shaved and brushed and slicked, I went down to find Olsen waiting, and took him to the main dining room, as the bar wasn’t open yet. When we’d ordered, I handed him one copy of the letter, telling him: “Keep it, I made it especially for you.”

He whistled as soon as he’d read it, and said: “Hey, hey, hey — I’ll say it’s a story, Cresap. You’ve practically accused this Army of inventing a false accusation in order to earn a bribe — something we’ve known goes on but haven’t been able to prove, as you say you’ll be able to do. You mind my asking how?”

“Well — I’ll reserve that for the confab.”

“What confab, Cresap?”

“At headquarters, today. That’s another thing I wanted to ask you about. How’d you like to attend?”

“Attend, Cresap? Hell, they wouldn’t let me.”

“Who is ‘they’? I’m this man’s counsel.”

“That’s right, so you are. So you are.”

He eyed me sharply then and read the letter again. Then he said: “But suppose you don’t have proof? This letter alone is a bombshell, enough to bring in the Gooch Committee. They’ll find the proof, if it’s there. And it has to be there, of course! This whole Army’s a mess of corruption, caused by cotton — graft, cumsha, and slipperoo, straight down the line and straight up the line, as this letter intimates. That’s what’ll interest Gooch.”

“Who’s Gooch, if I may ask?”

“Chairman of the committee in Congress that investigates this kind of stuff, the conduct of the war.”

“Oh yes, I’ve heard of him.”

“He can’t disregard this.”

I let him run on, through orange, eggs, and coffee, until he’d folded the letter up, tucked it in his pocket, and patted it. Then I said: “Of course, I haven’t submitted it yet.”

“What do you mean, you haven’t submitted it?”

“But that’s understood,” I said.

“Not by me,” he snapped, quite annoyed. “You hand me a letter, a copy you say you made for me, and I supposed it had been sent.”

“But I told you; I’m having a confab.”

“Listen, Cresap, you’re not in the newspaper business, so perhaps you don’t get the point. This letter is news, but I can’t touch it until it’s sent — that’s what makes it public, that’s what puts it on the record.”

“I do get the point. That’s the idea.”

“Well, thanks. And thanks.”

“Mr. Olsen,” I said very quietly, “I’m Mr. Landry’s counsel, and I don’t act for you, or the news, or the record. I act for him, and only him. If submitting the letter helps him, I submit. If not, if the confab says I shouldn’t, I don’t submit it. Now if you want to be present—”

“You know what this sounds like to me?”

“All right, Mr. Olsen, what?”

“Like you’re using me for a cat’s-paw.”

“Then call it that.”

“I call it what it is.”

“So I’m using you for a cat’s-paw, but if you don’t want to be one, just hand me the copy back, and I’ll find somebody else.”

“... What’s the rest of it?”

“You asking as a cat’s-paw?”

“As a cat’s-paw, yes. What next?”

“It’s very simple.”

I told him there was another person I had to invite to the confab, and that all he had to do was meet me at headquarters in an hour and let nature take its course. By the way he nodded, I knew he would be there.

I walked down to the City Hotel, turned in the key of 303, and when I got to the third floor, opened the room with my skeleton for a quick look. It was all just as I’d left it, even to the rumpled bed, except the two twenties were gone. I locked up and kept on to 346. Pierre opened as usual, giving no sign he connected me with the goings-on of last night — though of course, except for his brief interlude with a lady, he had no reason to know there’d been any goings-on. While he was calling Burke I had a flash at the basket: it was empty. So there weren’t any dangling ends, and Burke was surprised to see me. I told him: “I’ve been thinking things over since I saw you yesterday, and I’m making one last try on behalf of Mr. Landry, a direct appeal, man to man, to the Commanding General himself.”

“Me boy, it does you credit.”

But when he found out I’d already written the letter, he balked and demanded to see it. I said: “Mr. Burke, naturally I’d like your judgment, and I’d show it to you gladly, except for one thing: If I don’t help Mr. Landry, if I actually worsen his case, you’re the one hope he’ll have to undo what I’ve done. But in that case, you must be able to say you had nothing to do with the letter, didn’t even see it. And, naturally, you wouldn’t say so if it weren’t actually true.”

“... Naturally not.”

“But, I’m reading it to them first.”

“Reading to whom? And why?”

“To that bunch up there — those officers, up at headquarters. As a way of playing it safe, to see how it goes. If I’ve hit a sour note then I can tear it up, and perhaps you’ll step in. But I think you ought to be there.”

What I actually thought was: He dared not not be there. He stared, while the rheum in his eyes glittered, and then said: “Me boy, I find this peculiar.”

“But if you don’t want to go, Mr. Burke—”

“I must, but... What does this letter say?”

“What can it say? ‘Please sir, let him out.’ ”

He asked more questions, but now that I knew he would come, I was gaining nerve, and gave him open-faced answers. In the end he had no choice and picked up his hat and coat. Outside I called up a hack, but as we got in he told the driver: “We’re taking another passenger — stop at Lavadeau’s costume shop.”

At Lavadeau’s, he hopped out and ducked inside, I suspected to find out what she knew about it. When he came out she was with him, her eyes big question marks. I had hopped out by that time too, and as we stood on the banquette I told her: “Mrs. Fournet, I hope you approve this thing I’m about to attempt — it’ll be nice if all of us pull together. But, whether you approve or not, as counsel I must do as I think best. It’s my responsibility.”

“Well, since I don’t know what you’re doing—”

“You will, all in due time.”

We both sounded cold, and he apparently didn’t twig that we were doing an act. When he’d handed her into the cab and taken his place beside her, I took the facing seat, so her eyes could rove my face. They had a fishy look, or a good imitation thereof. At headquarters, he was for holding things up until we could get an order for the guard to fetch Mr. Landry, but that was completely forgotten when Olsen stepped out of the wire office. “We can’t have the press in this,” Burke roared in a kind of panic. “ ’Twould ruin us, me boy — the General makes the announcements! ’Tis how the thing is done!”

She said stuff of a similar kind, taking cue as I looked at her, but I shrugged it off. “Olsen’s all right,” I said. “He’ll give us a fair report.”

Then I led the way upstairs.