by Unknown
He was holding forth on life in general to Betty shortly before the luncheon hour when Pugsy Maloney entered bearing a card.
“Martin Parker?” said Smith, taking it. “I don’t know him. We make new friends daily.”
“He’s a guy wit’ a tall-shaped hat,” volunteered Master Maloney, “an’ he’s wearing a dude suit an’ shiny shoes.”
“Comrade Parker,” said Smith approvingly, “has evidently not been blind to the importance of a visit to Peaceful Moments. He has dressed himself in his best. He has felt, rightly, that this is no occasion for the flannel suit and the old straw hat. I would not have it otherwise. It is the right spirit. Show the guy in. We will give him audience.”
Pugsy withdrew.
Mr. Martin Parker proved to be a man who might have been any age between thirty-five and forty-five. He had a dark face and a black mustache. As Pugsy had stated, in effect, he wore a morning coat, trousers with a crease which brought a smile of kindly approval to Smith’s face, and patent-leather shoes of pronounced shininess.
“I want to see the editor,” he said.
“Will you take a seat?” said Smith.
He pushed a chair toward the visitor, who seated himself with the care inspired by a perfect trouser crease. There was a momentary silence while he selected a spot on the table on which to place his hat.
“I have come about a private matter,” he said, looking meaningly at Betty, who got up and began to move toward the door. Smith nodded to her, and she went out.
“Say,” said Mr. Parker, “hasn’t something happened to this paper these last few weeks? It used not to take such an interest in things, used it?”
“You are very right,” responded Smith. “Comrade Renshaw’s methods were good in their way. I have no quarrel with Comrade Renshaw. But he did not lead public thought. He catered exclusively to children with water on the brain and men and women with solid ivory skulls. I feel that there are other and larger publics. I cannot content myself with ladling out a weekly dole of predigested mental breakfast food. I—”
“Then you, I guess,” said Mr. Parker, “are responsible for this Broster Street thing?”
“At any rate, I approve of it and put it in the paper. If any husky guy, as Comrade Maloney would put it, is anxious to aim a swift kick at the author of that article, he can aim it at me.”
“I see,” said Mr. Parker. He paused. “It said ‘Number one’ in the paper. Does that mean there are going to be more of them?”
“There is no flaw in your reasoning. There are to be several more.”
Mr. Parker looked at the door. It was closed. He bent forward.
“See here,” he said, “I’m going to talk straight, if you’ll let me.”
“Assuredly, Comrade Parker. There must be no secrets, no restraint between us. I would not have you go away and say to yourself, ‘Did I make my meaning clear? Was I too elusive?’”
Mr. Parker scratched the floor with the point of a gleaming shoe. He seemed to be searching for words.
“Say on,” urged Smith. “Have you come to point out some flaw in that article? Does it fall short in any way of your standard for such work?”
Mr. Parker came to the point.
“If I were you,” he said, “I should quit it. I shouldn’t go on with those articles.”
“Why?” enquired Smith.
“Because,” said Mr. Parker.
He looked at Smith, and smiled slowly, an ingratiating smile. Smith did not respond.
“I do not completely gather your meaning,” he said. “I fear I must ask you to hand it to me with still more breezy frankness. Do you speak from purely friendly motives? Are you advising me to discontinue the series because you fear that it will damage the literary reputation of the paper? Do you speak solely as a literary connoisseur? Or are there other reasons?”
Mr. Parker leaned forward.
“The gentleman whom I represent—”
“Then this is no matter of your own personal taste? There is another?”
“See here, I’m representing a gentleman who shall be nameless, and I’ve come on his behalf to tip you off to quit this game. These articles of yours are liable to cause him inconvenience.”
“Financial? Do you mean that he may possibly have to spend some of his spare doubloons in making Broster Street fit to live in?”
“It’s not so much the money. It’s the publicity. There are reasons why he would prefer not to have it made too public that he’s the owner of the tenements down there.”
“Well, he knows what to do. If he makes Broster Street fit for a not-too-fastidious pig to live in—”
Mr. Parker coughed. A tentative cough, suggesting that the situation was now about to enter upon a more delicate phase.
“Now, see here, sir,” he said, “I’m going to be frank. I’m going to put my cards on the table, and see if we can’t fix something up. Now, see here. We don’t want any unpleasantness. You aren’t in this business for your health, eh? You’ve got your living to make, same as everybody else, I guess. Well, this is how it stands. To a certain extent, I don’t mind owning, since we’re being frank with one another, you’ve got us—that’s to say, this gentleman I’m speaking of—in a cleft stick. Frankly, that Broster Street story of yours has attracted attention—I saw it myself in two Sunday papers—and if there’s going to be any more of them—Well, now, here’s a square proposition. How much do you want to stop those articles? That’s straight. I’ve been frank with you, and I want you to be frank with me. What’s your figure? Name it, and if you don’t want the earth I guess we needn’t quarrel.”
He looked expectantly at Smith. Smith, gazing sadly at him through his monocle, spoke quietly, with the restrained dignity of some old Roman senator dealing with the enemies of the Republic.
“Comrade Parker,” he said, “I fear that you have allowed your intercourse with this worldly city to undermine your moral sense. It is useless to dangle rich bribes before the editorial eyes. Peaceful Moments cannot be muzzled. You doubtless mean well, according to your somewhat murky lights, but we are not for sale, except at fifteen cents weekly. From the hills of Maine to the Everglades of Florida, from Portland, Oregon, to Melonsquashville, Tennessee, one sentence is in every man’s mouth. And what is that sentence? I give you three guesses. You give it up? It is this: ‘Peaceful Moments cannot be muzzled!’”
Mr. Parker rose.
“Nothing doing, then?” he said.
“Nothing.”
Mr. Parker picked up his hat.
“See here,” he said, a grating note in his voice, hitherto smooth and conciliatory, “I’ve no time to fool away talking to you. I’ve given you your chance. Those stories are going to be stopped. And if you’ve any sense in you at all, you’ll stop them yourself before you get hurt. That’s all I’ve got to say, and that goes.”
He went out, closing the door behind him with a bang that added emphasis to his words.
“All very painful and disturbing,” murmured Smith. “Comrade Brown!” he called.
Betty came in.
“Did our late visitor bite a piece out of you on his way out? He was in the mood to do something of the sort.”
“He seemed angry,” said Betty.
“He was angry,” said Smith. “Do you know what has happened, Comrade Brown? With your very first contribution to the paper you have hit the bull’s-eye. You have done the state some service. Friend Parker came as the representative of the owner of those Broster Street houses. He wanted to buy us off. We’ve got them scared, or he wouldn’t have shown his hand with such refreshing candor. Have you any engagements at present?”
“I was just going out to lunch, if you could spare me.”
“Not alone. This lunch is on the office. As editor of this journal I will entertain you, if you will allow me, to a magnificent banquet. Peaceful Moments is grateful to you. Peaceful Moments,” he added, with the contented look the Far West editor must have worn as the bullet came through the
window, “is, owing to you, going some now.”
When they returned from lunch, and reentered the outer office, Pugsy Maloney, raising his eyes for a moment from his book, met them with the information that another caller had arrived and was waiting in the inner room.
“Dere’s a guy in dere waitin’ to see youse,” he said, jerking his head towards the door.
“Yet another guy? This is our busy day. Did he give a name?”
“Says his name’s Maude,” said Master Maloney, turning a page.
“Maude!” cried Betty, falling back.
Smith beamed.
“Old John Maude!” he said. “Great! I’ve been wondering what on earth he’s been doing with himself all this time. Good-old John! You’ll like him,” he said, turning, and stopped abruptly, for he was speaking to the empty air. Betty had disappeared.
“Where’s Miss Brown, Pugsy?” he said. “Where did she go?”
Pugsy vouchsafed another jerk of the head, in the direction of the outer door.
“She’s beaten it,” he said. “I seen her make a break for de stairs. Guess she’s forgotten to remember somet’ing,” he added indifferently, turning once more to his romance of prairie life. “Goils is bone-heads.”
CHAPTER XVII
THE MAN AT THE ASTOR
Refraining from discussing with Master Maloney the alleged bone-headedness of girls, Smith went through into the inner room, and found John sitting in the editorial chair, glancing through the latest number of Peaceful Moments.
“Why, John, friend of my youth,” he said, “where have you been hiding all this time? I called you up at your office weeks ago, and an acid voice informed me that you were no longer there. Have you been fired?”
“Yes,” said John. “Why aren’t you on the News any more? Nobody seemed to know where you were, till I met Faraday this morning, who told me you were here.”
Smith was conscious of an impression that in some subtle way John had changed since their last meeting. For a moment he could not have said what had given him this impression. Then it flashed upon him. Before, John had always been, like Mrs. Fezziwig in “The Christmas Carol,” one vast substantial smile. He had beamed cheerfully on what to him was evidently the best of all possible worlds. Now, however, it would seem that doubts had occurred to him as to the universal perfection of things. His face was graver. His eyes and his mouth alike gave evidence of disturbing happenings.
In the matter of confidences, Smith was not a believer in spade-work. If they were offered to him, he was invariably sympathetic, but he never dug for them. That John had something on his mind was obvious, but he intended to allow him, if he wished to reveal it, to select his own time for the revelation.
John, for his part, had no intention of sharing this particular trouble even with Smith. It was too new and intimate for discussion.
It was only since his return to New York that the futility of his quest had really come home to him. In the belief of having at last escaped from Mervo he had been inclined to overlook obstacles. It had seemed to him, while he waited for his late subjects to dismiss him, that, once he could move, all would be simple. New York had dispelled that idea. Logically, he saw with perfect clearness, there was no reason why he and Betty should ever meet again.
To retain a spark of hope beneath this knowledge was not easy and John, having been in New York now for nearly three weeks without any encouragement from the fates, was near the breaking point. A gray apathy had succeeded the frenzied restlessness of the first few days. The necessity for some kind of work that would to some extent occupy his mind was borne in upon him, and the thought of Smith had followed naturally. If anybody could supply distraction, it would be Smith. Faraday, another of the temporary exiles from the News, whom he had met by chance in Washington Square, had informed him of Smith’s new position and of the renaissance of Peaceful Moments, and he had hurried to the office to present himself as an unskilled but willing volunteer to the cause. Inspection of the current number of the paper had convinced him that the Peaceful Moments atmosphere, if it could not cure, would at least relieve.
“Faraday told me all about what you had done to this paper,” he said. “I came to see if you would let me in on it. I want work.”
“Excellent!” said Smith. “Consider yourself one of us.”
“I’ve never done any newspaper work, of course, but—”
“Never!” cried Smith. “Is it so long since the deaf old college days that you forget the Gridiron?”
In their last year at Harvard, Smith and John, assisted by others of a congenial spirit, had published a small but lively magazine devoted to college topics, with such success—from one point of view—that on the appearance of the third number it was suppressed by the authorities.
“You were the life and soul of the Gridiron,” went on Smith. “You shall be the life and soul of Peaceful Moments. You have special qualifications for the post. A young man once called at the office of a certain newspaper, and asked for a job. ‘Have you any specialty?’ enquired the editor. ‘Yes,’ replied the bright boy, ‘I am rather good at invective.’ ‘Any particular kind of invective?’ queried the man up top. ‘No,’ replied our hero, ‘just general invective.’ Such is your case, my son. You have a genius for general invective. You are the man Peaceful Moments has been waiting for.”
“If you think so—”
“I do think so. Let us consider it settled. And now, tell me, what do you think of our little journal?”
“Well—aren’t you asking for trouble? Isn’t the proprietor—?”
Smith waved his hand airily.
“Dismiss him from your mind,” he said. “He is a gentleman of the name of Benjamin Scobell, who—”
“Benjamin Scobell!”
“Who lives in Europe and never sees the paper. I happen to know that he is anxious to get rid of it. His solicitors have instructions to accept any reasonable offer. If only I could close in on a small roll, I would buy it myself, for by the time we have finished our improvements, it will be a sound investment for the young speculator. Have you read the Broster Street story? It has hit somebody already. Already some unknown individual is grasping the lemon in his unwilling fingers. And—to remove any diffidence you may still have about lending your sympathetic aid—that was written by no hardened professional, but by our stenographer. She’ll be in soon, and I’ll introduce you. You’ll like her. I do not despair, later on, of securing an epoch-making contribution from Comrade Maloney.”
As he spoke, that bulwark of the paper entered in person, bearing an envelope.
“Ah, Comrade Maloney,” said Smith. “Is that your contribution? What is the subject? ‘Mustangs I have Met?’”
“A kid brought dis,” said Pugsy. “Dere ain’t no answer.”
Smith read the letter with raised eyebrows.
“We shall have to get another stenographer,” he said. “The gifted author of our Broster Street series has quit.”
“Oh!” said John, not interested.
“Quit at a moment’s notice and without explanation. I can’t understand it.”
“I guess she had some reason,” said John, absently. He was inclined to be absent during these days. His mind was always stealing away to occupy itself with the problem of the discovery of Betty. The motives that might have led a stenographer to resign her position had no interest for him.
Smith shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, Woman, Woman!” he said resignedly.
“She says she will send in some more Broster Street stuff, though, which is a comfort. But I’m sorry she’s quit. You would have liked her.”
“Yes?” said John.
At this moment there came from the outer office a piercing squeal. It penetrated into the editorial sanctum, losing only a small part of its strength on the way. Smith looked up with patient sadness.
“If Comrade Maloney,” he said, “is going to take to singing during business hours, I fear this journal must put up its shutte
rs. Concentrated thought will be out of the question.”
He moved to the door and flung it open as a second squeal rent the air, and found Master Maloney writhing in the grip of a tough-looking person in patched trousers and a stained sweater. His left ear was firmly grasped between the stranger’s finger and thumb.
The tough person released Pugsy, and, having eyed Smith keenly for a moment, made a dash for the stairs, leaving the guardian of the gate rubbing his ear resentfully.
“He blows in,” said Master Maloney, aggrieved, “an’ asks is de editor in. I tells him no, an’ he nips me by the ear when I tries to stop him buttin’ t’roo.”
“Comrade Maloney,” said Smith, “you are a martyr. What would Horatius have done if somebody had nipped him by the ear when he was holding the bridge? It might have made all the difference. Did the gentleman state his business?”
“Nope. Just tried to butt t’roo.”
“One of these strong, silent men. The world is full of us. These are the perils of the journalistic life. You will be safer and happier when you are a cowboy, Comrade Maloney.”
Smith was thoughtful as he returned to the inner room.
“Things are warming up, John,” he said. “The sport who has just left evidently came just to get a sight of me. Otherwise, why should he tear himself away without stopping for a chat. I suppose he was sent to mark me down for whichever gang Comrade Parker is employing.”
“What do you mean?” said John. “All this gets past me. Who is Parker?”
Smith related the events leading up to Mr. Parker’s visit, and described what had happened on that occasion.
“So, before you throw in your lot with this journal,” he concluded, “it would be well to think the matter over. You must weigh the pros and cons. Is your passion for literature such that you do not mind being put out of business with a black-jack for the cause? Will the knowledge that a low-browed gentleman is waiting round the corner for you stimulate or hinder you in your work? There’s no doubt now that we are up against a tough crowd.”
“By Jove!” said John. “I hadn’t a notion it was like that.”