Chapter 4
At about the same hour that Edith Garvin was experiencing her "reunion" with Judge Black, the personable young editor of the Catayunga News-Gazette was out with his best girl.
Jack Harkins, thirty-one, brown-haired, five feet eleven inches in height and sturdily built, with pleasant blue eyes and a crisp, authoritative manner when he was behind the desk in his private office at the newspaper, wasn't quite so sure of his words on this particular occasion. The girl he was with was Sally Dalby, who happened to be both society and entertainment critic for the newspaper. So in one sense she was his employee; but in quite another, and especially after hours as now, she was his fiancee. Jack was trying to urge Sally to set the date for their wedding, and she was playing it coy.
Sally Dalby had fiery red hair whose burnished glow and thick cascade in a long pageboy to her shoulderblades had dazzled many an envious male. She had just turned twenty, and she had magnificent dark blue eyes, a dainty little nose with just the hint of an uptilt to it and widely flaring, sensuous wings. Perhaps of all her features, Jack liked best her wonderfully ripe, kissable mouth, for it was sweet and full and generous without the slightest nuance of haughtiness or snobbery. She had a very kissable dimple in her chin which he had already saluted as they parked in his Buick out on the old road east of the water plant which supplied the electrical power for the town. There was a dry old creek there which hadn't had water in it for a good twenty years, because now the water was piped in underground from Cossett Lake a dozen miles to the northeast. All that one could hear around was the sound of crickets, and the soft breeze in the azaleas and rhododendrons which lined the bank of the old creek and still flourished as one of nature's paradoxes in the midst of seeming drouth.
"Behave yourself, Jack darling," Sally murmured with a divine little blush. Her face was heart shaped, her forehead was high and rounded, and her cheeks were full and satiny. He hadn't turned on the car lights, but he knew that her skin was creamy pale and that in the neat little brown rayon frock which was modestly cut to just over her rounded, dimpled knees he was sitting next to what was unquestionably the most voluptuously exciting body in all Catayunga.
Jack and Sally had had dinner at the Briardale, which was just about the town's best restaurant. They'd had a private booth at the back where they could see all the patrons and yet be alone. Jack had held hands with her and then proposed this ride. She'd agreed, and teased him about wanting to take her out by the old creek. "You just want to have your way with me, that's all, Jack Harkins," she'd laughed.
"I haven't heard that expression since I used to read Thackeray," he had chuckled. "Besides, I'm going to do no such thing. I'll have you know I'm going to take you out there and propose."
"But we're already engaged, darling."
"I know that. But you've been putting me off about when it's going to be legal for me to kiss you and do lots of other things."
"Jack Harkins! People will hear us!" she had gasped, and again she had blushed adorably. The soft indirect lighting of the restaurant had let him see that wonderful creamy skin of hers, and he had felt an ache in his penis at the thought of how much he wanted her and how soon he wanted the wedding night to be.
Because Sally was a virgin, even though she was certainly not prudish about it. Her parents had died when she was twelve, and an elderly aunt on her father's side had brought her up. Old Aunt Hester liked him, he knew that, and at least if she had taught Sally decorum and seen to it that her niece had gone on to State College, she at least hadn't let her own spinster state influence Sally's understandable desire to find the right man and settle down and be happy. She had even encouraged her niece to go to work on the paper, and Sally had impulsively decided, after one winter vacation, to abandon college after three years and make a full-time job with the paper. Jack happened to know that one of the reasons for that decision was that she suspected Aunt Hester was beginning to get old and ailing and really missed her when she was away at school in Little Rock.
So for nearly the past year he'd had the pleasure of seeing her in the office every day and desiring her more and more, till finally he'd had the courage to date her, and then they discovered that they'd had things in common like literature and music and tennis and swimming, and just three months ago she'd agreed to be engaged to him.
Jack Harkins had been born in this little Arkansas town, and he'd gone on to journalism schooling at the University of Missouri and taken his degree there. Then he'd worked for a few years on a small weekly in that state, till finally he had come back to his home town where elderly Mr. Jonathan Billingsley, the owner of the News-Gazette, had given him a job as reporter and, two years ago, promoted him to the post of editor when old Ed Gurney had decided to say "30" to a long and honorable newspaper career.
His own parents were dead too, and perhaps that was why he was drawn to Sally Dalby more than he would normally be just because she was a lovely and desirable girl. Somehow he'd had a hankering for the big cities, but because Catayunga was where he'd been born and where he'd been happy with his folks and his younger brother Bob till the latter had been drowned when he was only twelve, swimming in that old creek where Welfare Island now stood, doing that on a lark and a dare from some of the other kids at school, he'd felt a kind of moral obligation to stay here and make a go of it. And now, of course, there was Sally and there was a reason for staying.
But there were some things that bothered Jack Harkins, and his first-rate newspaper training at the University had made him much more ambitious and also more perceptive than the average run of small-town newspaper editorial workers. For one thing, he wasn't too happy about the election of Judge Austin W. Black to the post on the bench of the Municipal Court. There were a lot of things he didn't like about the man, though he admitted to himself that it was probably personal bias. Austin W. Black's father had been successful in wildcat-ting oil in the fertile northeast section of the state, and had left his dissolute only son and heir nearly a million dollars. Black had gone on to get his law degree after his father's death, and to practice for a few years. Then he'd left Catayunga for about a decade, nobody quite knew where, and when he returned, he ran a campaign for the post of State's Attorney. Out of nowhere, he got support, and Jack Harkins estimated that almost a hundred thousand dollars must have been spent in campaign literature, radio and even television on behalf of Black's candidacy.
Nor had Jack Harkins been particularly fond of the deal which Black had cooked up to create a correctional institution so close to Catayunga and to use what might have been turned into an historic landmark and perhaps even a state tourist attraction into a grim prison. Black had also been responsible for the appointment of Marjorie Sayers as superintendent of that prison. In the interviews which Jack had had with the man after his successful election to the bench, the handsome young editor of the News-Gazette had taken an instinctive dislike to the paunchy, white-haired bombastic fellow, and some seventh sense had told Jack Harkins that Judge Austin W. Black wasn't the most honorable and honest man in the state.
Even now, with his arm around Sally Dalby's waist, and his prick aching with the sheer longing of wanting to taste her virginal sweetness and be her lover as well as her husband, Jack Harkins was thinking that if he could only prove his instinct about old Judge Black, what a scoop it would be for the News-Gazette! It might lead to the offer of a job from some of the big cities, like St. Louis or New Orleans or even Chicago. There were other signs in Catayunga which Jack Harkins didn't like at all and which he had noticed becoming more prevalent in the last year or two. A great many well dressed and obviously well-to-do men were stopping at the hotel, spending a few days, and yet the reports were they weren't enjoying what simple entertainment the town could afford during the weekend. Mostly, they were reported being out at Judge Black's palatial home, and there were even rumors that some of them had visited Welfare Island in the company of the Judge. He couldn't put his finger on it, but there was something very mysterious and probably something very wrong with the entire setup.
"A penny, darling," Sally Dalby teased as she rubbed her dainty forefinger over the tip of his strong, Roman nose.
"I hope they're worth more than that, Sally honey. But the first thing I want to say to you, is when do we get married?"
"Oh you!" she laughed teasingly. She turned up her face to be kissed, and he cupped her cheeks and almost reverently took her lips. The sweet warm moist mouth made him shudder with implacable desire, but he had never really tried to be aggressive. There was another girl at the office, that Claire Ralston, a svelte brunette of about twenty-six, who handled the display advertising of the paper and was a pretty good saleswoman, whom he was pretty sure he could have an affair with if he wanted. But since Sally had said she'd be his girl and one day marry him, he hadn't done anything about Claire. She'd been on the paper about six months now, breezing into Catayunga one day to move into her pretty and older cousin's house after the latter's husband had shot himself upon discovering that he had an incurable cancer. Claire Ralston had been born in St. Louis and had worked on one of the newspapers there after her graduation from college. She'd apparently inherited some money from her parents there, for she dressed more smartly than any other young woman in the town and she had her own car. He'd hired her with some misgivings, but her first week she'd sold more advertising than her predecessor had in the best month he had ever known.
"You're so serious tonight, lover," Sally Dalby again teased, kissing the tip of his nose. "What are you really thinking about, Jack?"
"If you want to know, and this is no reflection on your very tempting beauty, honey. I've been thinking about Judge Black. I'd like to know a lot more about him and how many pies he's got his fingers into. I just don't like the guy."
"I can't say that I blame you for saying that, Jack. You know, I did a story about his contributing five thousand dollars to the United Charities last winter. He invited me out to his house and made a great fuss about me. I didn't feel at all comfortable.
"That's the first time you've ever told me that, honey. I thought you interviewed him at his office at the court house."
"Oh no. I didn't see any need to tell you about it, because a good newspaper reporter gets the story where it is, and he wanted me over there. But I can assure you I'd never go there again."
"Don't tell me he made a pass at you-that dirty old lecher!"
"Now don't get your blood in an uproar darling," Sally chided. "Of course he didn't. But the way he looked at me, well, it's a good thing I'm broadminded. I don't mind it when you look at like that, though.
"Darling," Jack Harkins almost groaned as he held her very close and took her lips. For a blinding moment he wished that she were Claire Ralston instead beside him, because then he could probably plunge his hand under her skirt and put his other hand on one of those gorgeous big firm round titties of hers and tell her what he really wanted and long before their wedding night, too.
What Jack Harkins didn't know was that Claire Ralston wanted him to do exactly that and was quite miffed at him for not having already taken her out and made more than a gentlemanly pass at her. And because of that feminine rancor, and because Claire Ralston knew that her boss was gaga over red-haired Sally Dalby, the lives of this trio as well as that of many others were to be singularly changed in a most dramatic and unforeseen manner...