The Sporting House Killing G. Powell (best free novels .TXT) š
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- Author: G. Powell
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Catfish snorted. āThey got an earful.ā
āOh, hereās a good part: āIf you can block off a place, call it a Reservation, and license licentiousness, why donāt you reserve a few blocks where a man can commit murder and go unpunished?āā
Catfish shook his head. āThis is a town of only twenty-seven thousand folks, but weāve got about thirty-five churches, almost fifty saloons, and over sixty sporting houses. Itās the only place in the state where City Hall blesses all of āem. You lob a firebrand evangelist into that tinder, and sparksāll fly. Maybe even a blazing fire.ā
āA conflagration in Satanās Stronghold.ā
A fine day for Satan.
There was a flash of movement in the mirror as a Western Union messenger boy on a bicycle rattled over the threshold. The colonelās head popped up. The boy dropped his bicycle on its side and rushed up to Catfish.
āMr. Catfish, telegram for you.ā The boy was breathless. āMiss Peach said you were here.ā
āThanks, Billy.ā He tipped him, and the boy left.
Catfish popped his pince-nez spectacles back onto his nose and unfolded the telegram: CATFISH. NEED HELP. SON CICERO DISAPPEARED. SENDING ROOMMATE YOUR OFFICE. HENRY SWEET.
It had been such a fine day.
Chapter 3
Jasper was downright scaryfied. Heād finally had to tell Professor Charlton that Cicero hadnāt come back, but he hadnāt said any more than that. He told the professor he didnāt know where Cicero was at that very minute, and that was true. But even that stirred up a hornetās nest. Before long, a deputy sheriff showed up at the dorm, but Jasper didnāt tell him much neither.
He was worried about Cicero mostly, but he was scared for his own self too. If anybody found out heād went to a whorehouse to drink beer, theyād boot him straight out of Baylor before he could spit. His family would be shamed. Them folks at his church back home in Fayette County had put offerings in the plate just so he could go off to college. His parents didnāt ask them to. Folks just did it on their own because it was the neighborly thing to do, like helping with a barn raising. Momma and Daddy found out about it that Sunday morning at the same time he did, when the preacher announced it from the pulpit. Momma cried. Money was hard to come by for sharecroppers, especially those days.
Momma worried about him all the time, even when he was back home. She said āWatch for snakesā when he took off for the woods more times than Papa said grace. When he left home for college, his first time being away from home, they both give him a talking-to about city things to be wary of. Beer was one. And Momma said, āDonāt let some girl talk you into doing something you shouldnāt be doing.ā Reckon heād figured out now what she was talking about. If she heard about all this trouble heād gotten into in the city, sheād be disappointed in him. Daddy too. In fact, heād be awful sore.
Once the deputy left, Jasper had breathed easier, but then Professor Charlton told him they had to go downtown to some lawyer office. He just knew they was on to him. He aināt never been in no lawyer office. In fact, he didnāt recollect ever even laying eyes on a lawyer before. As far as he knowed, there wasnāt none in Flatonia, but they probably had two or three over in the county seat. He wondered if they wore wigs like that lawyer Buzfuz in the book heād read in English class. He hoped they wouldnāt talk as much as the folks in that book.
The office was next door to the Old Corner Drug. A gold-painted sign on the front door said Calloway & Calloway, Attorneys. Professor Charlton said they was father and son. He followed the professor into a front room, where a nice lady was working on one of them letter-typing machines heād seen at Baylor. It rattled like rain on a tin chicken shed. She took them into a bigger room that was longer than it was wide, with a high ceiling and fans dangling from long shafts. They was humming and going round and round, but it was still awful warm in there. Jasper felt like he had before his first class at Baylor, waiting for the professor in a classroom full of boys and girls he didnāt know and was too shy to meet.
The lady asked him and Professor Charlton to have a seat at a long table in the middle of the room. Other tables was around the room, stacked with books and papers and such. Against the left wall, right in the middle of the room, was a big olā rolltop desk like the postmaster had back home, with papers sticking out of pigeonholes and a stack of papers with blue wrappers and red ribbons. Heavy-looking books was stacked on the top. Another desk was across the room on the opposite wall. Electric lights was hanging from the ceiling. Maybe someday his family could get an electric light for the house. It would sure help Momma with her mending at night after supper, but for now they couldnāt even afford enough oil for the lamp. They made do with candles.
They waited not more than ten minutes before a man arrived, and then another one not long after. They was both tall. The older one seemed to run things.
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