Anything Goes

the trip became suddenly newsworthy, old Kessler put away his whittling knife, pulled rank and took over the story. Jack had—stupidly, he now admitted to himself—kept a distance from the story out of pure pique and a good journalist would never do that. He’d failed himself.
    The bicycle chain was still making a strange clanging noise, but only when he pedaled, so he kept to a slow coast all the way down the hill, allowing his mind to wander freely. When he’d said the word ‘murdered,’ he’d expected the Brewsters to laugh it off. But they’d taken it very seriously. Jack himself had really considered it merely gossip to fill lonely evenings for the people of Voorburg. But could Robert Brewster, the silly ass, be right? He immediately rejected the idea just because he was resentful of the rich, but his mind kept coming back to it.
    Kessler had done his reports in the paper, gone back to whittling and it was all just part of the past to him, Jack thought. The editor had no more interest in the matter. But what if Jack could find out something that Kessler didn’t know and wouldn’t have had the nerve to ask? Kessler was a bit mealy-mouthed around the gentry and particularly about Horatio Brewster, whom Kessler seemed to admire beyond good sense.
    This, Jack thought, might just be The Story that could get him to New York.
    He coasted down the rest of the hill, inventing fantasies of big New York newspaper editors sending drooling telegrams to him, begging him to come to the City and assume his rightful place on their papers as an ace reporter. He couldn’t wait to get back to the office and look over those articles.
     
    Mr. Kessler’s idea of newspaper writing wasn’t in synch with the times. He claimed that when he himself read a newspaper, he wanted the facts, not some damned reporter’s opinions. He and Jack were often at odds about this, and since Kessler was the editor, his will always prevailed.
    The lead news article in the Voorburg-on-Hudson Times was notably sparse and stuck strictly to the facts.
     
    LOCAL MAN DIES IN BOATING ACCIDENT
    Mr. Horatio Brewster of Honeysuckle Cottage, Voorburg-on-Hudson, New York, died last Sunday in a boating accident on the Hudson. Mr. Brewster had invited friends to accompany him aboard his yacht, Happy Times, to Bannerman’s Arsenal, 15 miles below Voorburg on the Hudson on Pollepel Island. Though the weather was fair at the onset of the journey, an unusually strong storm sprang up as the party approached the island, which is known to be a dangerous landing site.
    The yacht, tossed about in the wind and rain, as well as the erratic tides that always surround the island, apparently struck a rock or some other underwater obstruction of substance and sustained major damage. The yacht began to list severely from the inflow of water. Mr. Brewster’s guests, with the help of two guards of the island and Castle, all managed to either swim or take the small dinghy to the island.
    It was not discovered until the yacht had sunk from view that Mr. Horatio Brewster was not among those who had escaped the sinking vessel and found safety on land. A search was instituted, but was hampered by the storm. As of this date, Mr. Horatio Brewster’s body has not been found, though he is assumed to be deceased, according to the authorities.
    The other guests on board, Mr. Elgin Prinney, Esq., of Voorburg; Major Jonathan Winslow, businessman of Voorburg; Mr. Fred Eggers, businessman of Poughkeepsie; Mr. Charles Winningham, banker of New York City; Mr. Claude Cooke of New York City, and Mr. David Kessler, the editor of the Voorburg-on-Hudson Times, were all unharmed except for the most minor injuries.
     
    Jack read the article several times and then copied it out by hand, telling himself it was for his own reference, but thinking he might later share it with the Brewsters. Then he looked through the rest of that issue. Squeezed in here and there between advertisements, club meeting announcements and pictures of an eyesore of a house in town being torn down by a wrecking ball, Jack found a short interview with some of the others who had been aboard the Happy Times. Mr. Elgin Prinney expressed his sorrow at having lost an old and valued client, but said nothing of the accident himself except to say that it would be inappropriate to comment before the proper authorities had conducted a thorough investigation into the unfortunate circumstances.
    “Ever the lawyer,“ Jack snorted.