In the course of the next hour or two there were a
dozen newspaper reporters besieging the mansion, and
camera men taking pictures of it, and even spying
with opera glasses from a distance. Before my
mind’s eye flashed new headlines:
This was an aspect of the matter which we had at first
overlooked. Carpenter was due at Judge Ponty’s
police-court at nine o’clock that morning.
Was he going? demanded the reporters, and if not, why
not? Mary Magna no doubt would be willing to
sacrifice the two hundred dollars bail that she had
put up; but the judge had a right to issue a bench
warrant and send a deputy for the prisoner. Would
he do it?
Behind the scenes of Western City’s government
there began forthwith a tremendous diplomatic duel.
Who it was that wanted Carpenter dragged out of his
hiding-place, we could not be sure, but we knew who
it was that wanted him to stay hidden! I called
up my uncle Timothy, and explained the situation.
It wasn’t worth while for him to waste his breath
scolding, I was going to stand by my prophet.
If he wanted to put an end to the scandal, let him
do what he could to see that the prophet was let alone.
“But, Billy, what can I do?” he cried.
“It’s a matter of the law.”
I answered: “Fudge! You know perfectly
well there’s no magistrate or judge in this
city that won’t do what he’s told, if the
right people tell him. What I want you to do
is to get busy with de Wiggs and Westerly and Carson,
and the rest of the big gang, and persuade them that
there’s nothing to be gained by dragging Carpenter
out of his hiding-place.”
What did they want anyway? I argued. They
wanted the agitation stopped. Well, we had stopped
it, and without any bloodshed. If they dragged
the prophet out from concealment, and into a police
court, they would only have more excitement, more
tumult, ending nobody could tell how.
I called up several other people who might have influence;
and meanwhile T-S was over at his office in Eternal
City, pleading over the telephone with the editors
of afternoon papers. They had got the Red Prophet
out of the way during the convention, and why couldn’t
they let well enough alone? Wasn’t there
news enough, with five or ten thousand war-heroes
coming to town, without bothering about one poor religious
freak?
When you shoot a load of shot at a duck, and the bird
comes tumbling down, you do not bother to ask which
particular shot it was that hit the target. And
so it was with these frantic efforts of ours.
One shot must have hit, for at eleven o’clock
that morning, when the case of John Doe Carpenter
versus the Commonwealth of Western City was reached
in Judge Ponty’s court, and the bailiff called
the name of the defendant and there was no answer,
the magistrate in a single sentence declared the bail
forfeited, and passed on to the next case without
a word. And all three of our afternoon newspapers
reported this incident in an obscure corner on an
inside page. The Red Prophet was dead and buried!
