All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred twenty-four)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Five

Collecting Debts

(part one hundred twenty-four)

It had taken a day…

Rowan’s asking of, to locate just where he’d filed that copy. He would not say Mr. Yeager, but someone in his employ had picked it up, on a journey east—

“To the state of Ohio. Well, sir, I’d supposed it. Send your boy along when you’ve reacquainted yourself with the evidence.”

The third day out, Kinaelty crossed to Papa’s office, actual newspaper in his briefcase, titled in full the Hamilton Co. Flagstaff.

“Kinaelty, have you looked at this? Knights of Honor meeting Wednesday, Jan twelfth. Puts its last year. Here’s one starts off ‘readers of the Times will be familiar’. So forth, talk about stamp revenue…early days for Garfield. Man named Carruthers setting up works in Bollinger County…Missouri? Mrs. Meach’s cow stolen from her barn, Blanchester. The whole back page is blank. What kind of patch job is this?”

“I don’t venture to guess.”

“And then goes out of its way to print… I don’t have to be dainty, do I?”

“So far as between the two of us. But keep your powder dry.”

By this aphorism, the lawyer meant what he proceeded to do, open the inner door, peer into the clerk’s room, close the door. Next, the window shutter.

“They went out of their way to print a defamation against you, sir.”

“I’d’ve said goddamn lies. But this son… How long have I been married? What have I ever done but work the farm? What in God’s name ever…”

“We’re not being dainty, now. Will you suppose what’s not said to your face may be thoughts of young Jerome?”

Kinaelty’s clerk, given twenty dollars to spend on the mission, had exchanged telegrams with Ohio officials—who could not count themselves having seen a Flagstaff.

What says the masthead?

Hamilton Co. Flagstaff, Vol. XIX, Date: October 27, 1881. Publisher I. Geben.

The publication’s business quarters? What address? Letters to the editor to be sent to a Post Office box?

No address, no mention of letters, no advertising or subscription rates, no inquiries sent to, etc.

We cannot advise. Do you wish to be sent a list of Hamilton County Postmasters?

Did they? Exchanges by mail took many weeks; Kinaelty felt Rowan bound to drink himself into further woes. “And if he appears in public in that state, it will be very easy to discredit him.”

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Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred twenty-five)

(2024, Stephanie Foster)