Page:The Post-Mortem Murder by Sinclair Lewis.djvu/13

 THE POST-MORTEM MURDER Jason was sent from New York to see him. Can you not visualize it? The ardent youngster arrives; is willing to take from Palatainos any orders, however desperate* And he finds that Palatainos is a traitor, is in the pay of the Turks! Sitting in the kitchen, by a fireplace of whitewashed bricks, Palatainos leers upon the horrified Yankee lad with the poisonous sophistication of an international spy. He bids Jason spy upon the Greeks in America, Staggered, Jason goes feebly up to bed. All next day he resists the traitor's beguil emen t. Pal atainos plies him with brandy. The poet sits brooding; suddenly he springs up, righteously attacks Palatainos, the lamp is upset, the house partly burned, and Jason, a stranger and friendless, is arrested by the besotted country con- stable. He was, in prison, as truly a martyr to freedom as if he had veri- tably been shot in a tender-colored Grecian afternoon ! My reconstruction of the history was — though now I was so distressed that I could take but little pride in it — much quoted from "The Gonfalon" not only in America, but abroad. The "Mercure de France" mentioned it, inexcusably misspelling my name. I turned to the tracing of Jason's his- tory after his release from the peniten- tiary, since now I did not know when and where he actually had died. I was making plans when there appeared another letter from Whitney Edgerton, the secret assassin of Jason, He snarled that Palatinus's name was not Palatainos. It was Palatums. He was not a Greek; he was a Swede. I wrote to Edgerton, demanded his proofs, his sources for all this informa* tion. He did not answer. He an- swered none of my half-dozen letters. "The Gonfalon" announced that it had been deceived in regard to Jason, that it would publish nothing more about him. So for the third time Jason Sanders was killed, and this time he seemed likely to remain dead. Shaky, impoverished by my explora- tions on Cape Cod and in Delaware, warned by the dean that I should do well to stick to my teaching and cease " these unfortunate attempts to gain notoriety," I slunk into quiet class- work, seemingly defeated. Yet all the while I longed to know when and where Jason really had died. Might he not have served valorously in the American Civil War? But how was 1 to know? Then came my most ex- traordinary adventure in the service of Jason Sanders. §6 I went to Quinta's for tea. I have wondered sometimes if Quinta may not have become a bit weary of my speculations about Jason, I did not mean to bore her; I tried not to: but I could think of nothing else, and she alone was patient with me, "How— how — how can I force Edger- ton to tell all he knows?" I said with a sigh. "Go see him!" Quinta was impa- tient. "Why, you know 1 can't afford to, with all my savings gone, and Edger- ton way out in Nebraska." She shocked me by quitting the room. She came back holding out a check— for three hundred dollars! The Gateses are wealthy, but naturally I could not take this, I shook my head. "Please!" she said sharply. "Let 's get it over." I was suddenly hopeful. "Then you do believe in Jason?