Free The Scribe by Matthew Guinn Page A

killed the first two, but not all three.”
    The bishop’s eyes flashed behind his spectacles. “You can’t mean—”
    â€œThe killer may well be a white man,” Canby said. He looked at Wellingrath. “A cracker, perhaps, somebody with a good deal of race hatred in him. Probably your lower-class sort of man, someone who could just get himself into the Kimball House but would not stand out in Jenningstown, walking through. Or maybe a foreman, a middleman for someone wealthier who has business in the Negro districts.”
    â€œBut who also has enough money to pay the fare for your up-and-coming whore,” Wellingrath said.
    â€œYou’re right there. I have not yet figured that through.”
    â€œWhat about the letters?” Vernon asked, pulling on his cigar.
    As he spoke, Canby found the sound of his own voice unconvincing. “The carving on this last one seemed to have been done in more haste than the others. Perhaps he was interrupted in his work. He may have intended to complete the letter as a D .”
    It made things worse that Vernon seemed not even to suspect the lie, so he pressed on.
    â€œ Madness , perhaps? He could carry it in a number of directions,” Canby said, thinking instead of malice , malignant , malevolent . “Or maybe just mad . Maybe he’s done. I have an idea of how to find out,” he was saying as a rising tide of voices in the street drowned out his voice.
    A man leaped into the vestibule, the frosted-glass door held open behind him with one hand, his hat in the other. His face was radiant.
    â€œSherman’s coming, boys!” he cried, then grinned. “Again! Got it on the word of Henry Grady hisself. Be in the paper tomorrow! Just you watch that stock go now!”
    Then he was gone, the door swinging shut on the space where he’d stood a second before.
    The Bonanza was instantly in a fury of motion. Men leaped from their seats and grabbed for hats and coats, tossed bills on the tabletops. The bishop, too, was rising, and Wellingrath had begun to struggle upward from his chair.
    â€œGentlemen, I should be getting back to the cathedral,” Bishop Drew said.
    â€œTake care you don’t stop by the exposition office on yourway,” Vernon said, and winked. “There’s a stampede in progress.” To Canby, he said, “Wonder how much stock Grady bought up before he let the news out?”
    â€œAs much as the son of a bitch could afford, I’ll bet.”
    â€œWatch yourself,” Wellingrath said to Canby, then he was gone.
    â€œHe will,” Vernon answered through a cloud of smoke. His eyes were on the front door. Canby followed them to see Lee Smith himself there, in the vestibule, apparently having come out from his office to try to stop the throngs of men before they ran out on their unpaid tabs. Someone pushed him aside and he remained pinned against a fresco until the last few had gotten through.
    Canby looked out the flung-open door and saw that a hard rain had begun to fall. Men rushed out into it unheeding, hustling for the I.C.E. office before the news of Sherman got widespread enough to raise the value of the exposition’s stock to its saturation point. Some going to buy, some to sell, he figured. They seemed to be both coming and going. As he watched and as Lee Smith shook his head and brushed at his rumpled clothes, a pair of men counting their money collided in the street and fell to the mud, one grasping at coins half sunk in the muck of Decatur Street and the other rising, wiping a grimy bill on his jacket sleeve.
    Vernon rattled the ice in his drink and turned away from the door. “Atlanta,” he said with a sigh to the now-empty saloon. “Madness, you say?”
    He tossed back the dregs of his drink and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Standard fare.”

October 8

    N EARLY A WEEK OF SULLEN RAIN, UNRELENTING , cold. Canby and Underwood had been at this