A WILD NIGHT ON NEW YORK BAY.
“Simply immense, Sumner!” was the city editor’s greeting when Dick went
into the office on the morning after his Sing Sing experience. “‘Open
the north switch!’ ha, ha! Nobody else has a line of that. How did you
get hold of it?”
Dick might have answered that he got it by honest hard work and
following up a very slight clew, but he merely said that he stumbled
upon it. The pleasure of doing the piece of work in that day’s paper
was all gone. His head still ached, and he was thoroughly ashamed of
himself. Never before had so many of the good men of the office taken
pains to speak to him; never in his life had he received half as
many compliments. But he could think of nothing but his shame at the
Scribble Club, of his gambling and drinking and losing his money.
The money loss was the smallest part of his disgrace, still it troubled
him greatly. It was absolutely necessary for him to send money to his
mother and to have enough to support him through the week, and he knew
of no way to get it.
“There must be some way to raise a little money when a fellow is
making a fair salary,” he reflected. “Randall will know. He knows how I
happen to be without money, and he can tell me what to do.”
Randall’s advice to an older man would have been to take his watch to
a pawn shop; but when Dick asked it was different. Dick had had little
experience of life; he was a boy among men of the world and he had
great ability; and all these things helped to make Randall take an
interest in him. For there are many worse men in the world than Jack
Randall. Generous to a fault, with no one but himself to support, he
made money easily and spent it with equal facility, and spent it as
readily on a friend as upon himself.
“Why, my boy, of course I can tell you what to do,” he said when Dick
told him just how he was situated. “It was my fault for letting you
play at all, and I ought have known better; but upon my word it was
only thoughtlessness on my part. It was not that I wanted to teach you
the lively ways of the Scribblers.”
“As far as the money goes,” he went on, “that’s easily remedied. I
am hard up myself, as usual; but as soon as Dr. Goode comes in this
evening I will borrow twenty-five dollars from him and turn it over to
you, and you can pay it back whenever it’s convenient; no hurry about
it at all.”
Dick’s assignments that day were much better ones than he had had
before, and he tried to work hard enough to forget his troubles.
It was almost a certainty that Dr. Goode would have something to
say in the evening about the Sing Sing story, for the doctor seldom
read an unusually good article in the Transport without saying a few
encouraging words to the writer.
“And to think that if he speaks to me about it I shall have some of his
own money in my pocket, borrowed to replace what I lost at gambling!”
Dick reflected. “I half-wish I were back in the Record office, washing
rollers for three dollars a week.”
Dr. Goode took his time about commending Dick’s work that evening. He
waited for an opportunity to have him as nearly alone as possible, and
then spoke, Dick thought, more kindly than he had ever heard him speak
before.
“I like the construction of your Sing Sing story, Sumner,” the doctor
said, taking off both pairs of glasses and wiping them with his
handkerchief and then replacing them. “A good article must be built up,
you know, like a ship; one part here, another there, and every part
in the right place. I see that you understand that. You write good
English, too, and that shows that your reading has been good, for no
man can write good English who does not read good English.
“Of course you understand,” the doctor went on, “that doing such a
piece of work as you did yesterday gives a man a certain standing in
the office. He is considered one of the good men and steps up above
the humdrum fellows who have no stuff in them. Naturally you will have
a better class of work in the future, and in a short time your salary
will be raised, for we do not ask good men to work for fifteen dollars
a week. In time I expect you to be one of the best reporters in the
city, if you take care of yourself.
“But only if you take care of yourself,” the doctor continued, laying
his hand gently on Dick’s knee. “Many a man has started here with
prospects as bright as yours, and has gone to pieces. Scribble clubs
and rum and cards will soon darken the brightest prospects.”
Dick started and blushed furiously and his lips trembled.
“Yes, I know all about it, my boy. Randall did not want to tell me,
but I wound it out of him because I like you. I like all young men who
have brains. I understand what the temptations are; I have been through
it myself. I don’t want to lecture you, but merely to put you in the
way of seeing for yourself. Look about the office among all the men
you know, and you will see that the really successful ones keep away
from the little clubs and the cards and the drink. A dissipated man may
flourish for a time if he is exceptionally brilliant, but he is sure to
be left behind at last. See that for yourself, and with your brains
you will need no other argument.”
Dick went home to Russellville that night for the first time in over
a week, and his mother and sister gave him such a welcome as they
considered due to a distinguished young writer and journalist, as they
called him--half in jest and half in earnest.
“Say, sis,” he expostulated from the depths of the biggest
rocking-chair, “do me a favor, will you? Never call me a journalist
again. You don’t know how the real reporters and writers laugh at that
word. They say that a journalist is a decayed penny-a-liner who comes
’round on payday and tries to borrow a quarter. The fellows who do the
work and make the money are content to be called reporters.”
“Very well,” Florrie laughed; “then I’ll always call you a reporter.”
She could not help noticing the change in Dick--a change for the
better. He was so much more manly, so self-possessed, and he was
dressed so much better.
“But I want you to tell me about Sing Sing,” she went on. “Did you
really go into that big prison and see the warden? And did you see that
splendid man who obeyed orders about the switch, though he thought it
was going to kill ever so many people? How do you ever have courage to
ask questions of everybody, Dick?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, that was a pretty hard pull at first,”
Dick replied. “The first time I was sent to interview a man I walked up
and down outside for half an hour before I raised courage to go in. But
that feeling soon wears off; I don’t think of being diffident about it
now. Indeed, I think I rather like it. I want to take you and mother
into the city with me in two or three weeks to help me interview a man.”
“O Dick!” they both exclaimed, “how could we do that?”
“Easily,” Dick answered, smiling over his little mystery. “You see the
man is a real estate agent; he has flats to let.”
“Do you mean it, Dick?” his mother asked. “Do you feel secure enough in
the office to take such an important step?”
The subject of taking a small flat in the city and all living together
was thoroughly discussed. Mrs. Sumner had a little income of her own,
and by uniting this with Dick’s salary a cheap flat could be rented,
not more than twenty dollars a month. “And it would be a positive
saving to me,” Dick argued; “the restaurants are so expensive.
“We can even do a little better than that,” he went on. “I don’t know
whether you have heard me speak of Darling, one of our copy readers.
I didn’t discover his room till I’d been some time in the office, for
it’s separate from our city room; but Darling is a fine fellow, three
or four years older than I am, handsome, too, and very quiet. He has
no relations in the city, and when I mentioned the other day that we
thought of taking a flat, he said he’d like to rent a room from us, for
he doesn’t like to be among strangers. He would pay about four dollars
a week just for the room, and with that we could afford a thirty-dollar
flat; and we can get a very fair one for that.”
“Thirty dollars a month!” Florrie exclaimed. “I should think we ought
to get a fine house for that.”
Dick laughed merrily at his sister’s rural notions. He had learned
something about city ways and prices.
“Perhaps I’ll not be out again till it’s time for you to come in and
select the flat,” he said. “I’ll have longer articles to write now
since the Sing Sing business, and long articles always keep a man late.”
The brightest reporters, however, cannot be assigned to important
things when no important things are happening; and weeks passed before
Dick had another chance to show his mettle. He was relieved of the
tiresome work of attending petty meetings, and that was a gain; and he
was sure that when a chance came for doing good work, he would have his
share of it.
Darling, whose work was from six in the evening till the paper went
to press at two in the morning, not only liked Dick’s writing, but
liked Dick himself, and he did all he could to hasten the day when Mrs.
Sumner and Florrie should come in to help select a flat.
“At two to-morrow afternoon, Darling,” Dick announced when the time
came. “My mother and sister are to meet me at the south end of the
postoffice at two o’clock, and you must be there and go with us, for
you are interested in this thing, too. I hope we can find a flat where
you can room with us. There ought to be no trouble when flats are so
plenty.”
“There will be, though,” Darling answered; “there always is. When the
flat suits, the price is too high; and when the price suits, the flat
doesn’t. But I’ll meet you at any rate, and we’ll see what we can do.”
It was not till Dick saw the next day that Darling preferred to walk
with his sister, that he noticed how very pretty Florrie looked.
She was a little girl in his eyes, though nearly seventeen, and her
abundance of wavy brown hair, her expressive eyes, her pink cheeks, and
her graceful bearing had never attracted his notice before.
“We will take a Fourth Avenue car,” Dick said, after Darling had been
introduced to his mother and sister. “There are a great many flats in
Fourth Avenue and some parts of it don’t look expensive.”
It amused Dick to see how attentive Darling was to Florrie; helping her
into the car and pointing out the sights of the lower city. Dick had
never paid much attention to young ladies.
The car carried them up past Union Square, and a few blocks beyond that
Dick saw a sign at the door of a large apartment house--“Apartment
to Let. Inquire of the Janitor.” He knew it to be a very elegant and
expensive place, for business had taken him there a few days before.
But it occurred to him that it would be a good chance to let his mother
and Florrie see one of the finest apartment houses in the city, and at
the same time he would surprise them a little with the price, which was
sure to be high. He signaled the conductor to stop and gave Darling a
sly look, which was understood.
“We would like to look at the apartment you have to let,” Dick said to
the attendant at the door; and in a moment they were all in an elevator
resplendent with gilt and mirrors, rapidly traveling skyward.
“It is a small apartment,” the attendant said when they reached the
place; “only a drawing-room, two bed chambers, and bath. But there is a
beautiful view; this is the eleventh floor.”
<tb>
Mrs. Sumner shrank back from the window with an exclamation of alarm.
“Oh, I never could live up here, Dick!” she said. “It makes me giddy
just to look out. They’re such stuffy little rooms, too, though very
handsome. I suppose they’d want a pretty good rent, small as it is.
What is the rent, young man?”
“Thirty-five hundred a year, ma’am,” the attendant answered. “We will
have a larger apartment vacant in about two months; that will be five
thousand.”
Darling was afraid that the ladies would express the surprise he saw in
their faces, so he hastily said:--
“We could hardly wait two months, and these rooms are too small; so we
may as well look elsewhere. Shall we go down?”
“It was a shame not to tell you before we went in, mother,” Dick said
when they were in the street again; “but I wanted to give you a little
surprise. Those three small rooms are three thousand five hundred
dollars a year, and we’ve got to have at least six rooms for thirty
dollars a month. So you see what a task we have before us.”
It was a task indeed, but it was successfully accomplished. After
visiting places little better than tenement houses, and other places
far beyond their means, they found an apartment in Forty-ninth Street,
near Lexington Avenue, that was satisfactory in both size and price.
“No, you’re not going to fool me again, Dick,” Mrs. Sumner said when
she first saw the marble columns in front, the carved doors, and the
mosaic pavement. “I’m not going into any more of your three thousand
five hundred dollar places.”
“No danger of that here, Mrs. Sumner,” Darling said with a smile. “The
show is all on the outside here to catch the eye. We shall find it
plain enough within.”
It was plain, but clean and comfortable. “Just made for us,” Dick
whispered to his mother. Up two flights of carpeted stairs, the
apartment consisted of three cheerful bedrooms, parlor, dining-room,
kitchen, and bathroom, all opening into a private hall; and the rent
was thirty dollars a month.
“If that hall bedroom will suit Mr. Darling,” Mrs. Sumner said, “I
think we can get along very nicely here--though I must say I like to
have a backyard.”
“It is exactly the room I want,” Darling declared; and the flat was
rented and arrangements made for moving in immediately.
“I think we’re going to be just as snug as can be here,” Dick said to
Darling several days later, when the moving was completed, but the
rooms not entirely put in order yet. “What do you say to a little
housewarming to-night, to give us a good start in the new home? Just
among ourselves, you know. I think an oyster supper would be the thing,
and I’m sure the folks would gladly sit up and help us eat it after
we’re through work.”
“That’s a good idea,” Darling answered. “You go ahead and make the
arrangements and I will pay half the bills.”
“It will be just fun to do the cooking,” said Florrie. “I’ll manage
to cook whatever you get, and sit up to help eat it. It’s the cutest
little kitchen, with everything so handy that cooking is no trouble at
all.”
“Oysters always go well,” Dick went on; “though anything ought to taste
good in such a cozy little dining-room. We’ll need about two quarts;
and I’ll get some celery and crackers and a little Roquefort cheese to
wind up with. Some other night we’ll have a rarebit; sis is famous for
making rarebits.”
Preparations for the night’s banquet were begun, but fate had decreed
that Dick was not to help eat it. In his enthusiasm he had forgotten
for the moment that a reporter is never master of his own time, but may
be sent to the most unexpected places at the most unexpected times.
Dick’s day work kept him busy till eight o’clock in the evening, and
as he had a small article to write after reaching the office, he had
reason to believe that he would have nothing more to do that night. But
he had hardly taken his seat when the night city editor called to him:--
“Sumner, can a man get over from Staten Island to the New Jersey shore
in a sailboat to-night?”
It was not unusual for Dick to be asked such questions, because he
made a specialty of studying up all the routes of travel in and about
the city. He was a perfect walking guide-book, and almost every day he
found the knowledge useful.
“He might, sir,” Dick replied, “but a sailboat is always very
uncertain.”
“I have sent Lawrence to the lower end of Staten Island,” the editor
went on, “with orders to get a sailboat and go over to Port Monmouth as
fast as possible. Do you think he can get there before midnight?”
“It’s very doubtful, sir,” Dick answered. “Of course it depends upon
the wind, and I should not like to take any chances on it.”
“Can you get to Port Monmouth?” the editor asked. “Remember the last
train went at six o’clock.”
“Oh, yes, I can get there if you don’t mind the expense,” Dick
asserted. “It is merely a question of money.”
“You mean a tug?”
“Yes, sir,” said Dick; “I mean a tug.”
“Very well, then,” said the editor; “you can drop that insurance matter
and take this case. You must get to Port Monmouth at all hazards.
Of course you know all about the stealing of the body of Sterling,
the great millionaire, from St. Mark’s Churchyard; and you know what
desperate efforts the police are making to catch the thieves. The
chief of police started for Port Monmouth on the six o’clock train, and
he is supposed to have a clew to the thieves there. You must find the
chief and learn whatever he learns. It is a matter of absolute must.
You _must_ get there. Here is an order on the cashier for fifty
dollars for expenses.”
“The World has proposed to us,” the editor continued, “to share the
expense of a tug. Stop at the World office and say that we accept the
proposition. They will send Mr. Hills with you to represent them. Now
be off and don’t lose a minute.”
Dick lost about twenty seconds in telling Darling that he was off for
New Jersey and could not help eat the supper, and in almost no time he
was at the World office, where he was joined by Mr. Hills, a short,
stout reporter with a head full of brains.
“The East River’s the place,” Mr. Hills panted. “Right down Fulton
Street to South.”
Hiring a tug seems an easy matter with plenty of money at command and
so many tugs in the harbor looking for work. But at nine o’clock at
night one might almost as well try to hire a white elephant. Towing is
day work; and at six o’clock the tugs steam to their berths along the
East River, fires are banked for the night, and captains and crews go
home, leaving only watchmen in charge.
The two reporters boarded a dozen tugs, but everywhere the answer was
the same: “Impossible! Fires banked, crew gone home.”
“Can’t you send for the captain?” Dick asked in several places. The
answer led him to believe that every tugboat captain in New York lived
in Harlem, or Morrisania, or some other distant section.
“Get an ocean steamer to whistle for one,” one of the watchmen
suggested. “That may bring one out.”
“Capital idea!” Dick exclaimed. “Here’s the Ward Liner Santiago just
below, at foot of Wall Street. We’ll get her to whistle up a tug.”
But that proved another disappointment. “Couldn’t think of it,” said
the second officer, who was in charge. “If the captain himself was
aboard, he wouldn’t do it, because if he did he’d make the ship liable
for the tug’s charges.”
Matters were growing desperate. It was half-past nine by this time,
and the editor’s words kept ringing painfully in Dick’s ears: “It is a
matter of absolute must. You _must_ get there.”
It was an inspiration that caused Dick to stop a nautical-looking man
in South Street and ask him what saloon the tugboat men most frequented.
“Duffy’s,” replied the man without hesitation; “corner of Fulton
Street. It’s full of ’em at this minute.”
In Duffy’s saloon the reporters found a crowd of tugboat men, and among
them Captain Brett, of the tug Dart. Several of the captain’s men were
there, too; and he was willing to negotiate.
“Do you hear the wind howl?” Captain Brett asked. “It’s an ugly night
down the bay. But I’ll risk the boat if you’ll risk your lives. Ten
dollars an hour it will cost you, gentlemen, from the time we leave the
pier till we get back.”
The terms were satisfactory and the bargain was made, and in less than
twenty minutes the Dart was steaming down the East River, Dick and Mr.
Hills in the pilot house with Captain Brett.
“You must understand,” said the captain, his voice half-drowned by the
furious wind that pounded against the windows, “that I only take you to
Port Monmouth. I don’t agree to land you there. There used to be an old
wharf there, but it may have blown down; and anyway I couldn’t find it
this dark night. You must take your chances of getting ashore.”
“Very well,” Dick answered. “Stop at the Battery boat-stand as you go
out, and we will attend to the landing.”
“What good will that do?” Hills asked.
“Why, we’ll hire a Whitehall boatman to go with us, boat and all,” Dick
answered. “With his boat on board we can land wherever we like.”
“Good!” said Mr. Hills; “that’s as good an idea as if I’d thought of it
myself.”
Five dollars proved sufficient to induce one of the boatmen of
Whitehall to put his boat aboard the tug and go along himself, and a
few minutes later the little tug was dancing madly on the rough surface
of the upper bay.
“This is nothing to what you’ll catch down below,” was Captain Brett’s
comforting assurance. Down past the lights of Quarantine the tug
steamed, through the Narrows, and into the lower bay. The roughness was
nothing compared to the inky blackness. The world surely never saw a
darker night.
It was almost 11.30 when Captain Brett rang a bell and the engines
stopped.
“Now, then, gentlemen,” said he, “as near as I can judge we’re off Port
Monmouth. I can’t say to a certainty, but that’s my opinion. A man
can’t see through such thick black as this, and you mustn’t expect it.
If you like to take your chances, I think you’ll find Port Monmouth
somewhere off to the south’ard here.”
Dick opened the pilot house door and stepped partially out, and Hills
followed. The wind almost swept them from their feet; the total
darkness, the fury of the gale, the tossing of the little boat were
enough to appall them.
“I don’t half-like this,” Mr. Hills said as they hastily drew back and
closed the door. “The captain may be mistaken after all, and not be
anywhere near Port Monmouth. What do you think?”
“There is only one thing to think,” Dick answered decidedly. “We must
get ashore. Let them lower the boat, captain.”
In five minutes more, after some risk in the heavy sea, they were both
in the Whitehall boat, and its owner was rowing them in the direction
in which the shore was supposed to lie. Another minute or two and the
boatman called out:--
“There’s something ahead here, and we’re near the beach, for I smell
it. Yes, we’ve made it; here’s the end of the old wharf. That was a
good guess on such a night.”
Dick and his companion, with their landsmen’s eyes, could see nothing;
but they could feel the worm-eaten timbers of the decaying old wharf.
How long it might be and how far the end from shore they could not even
guess. But they could tell by feeling that the structure towered far
above their heads. There was no help for it but to climb the timbers,
feeling their way slowly from one to another, to the platform far
above. To make matters worse, Mr. Hills was much too fat for a climber,
and Dick had almost to drag him up.
After climbing thus nearly twenty feet, with hands cut by barnacles
and rusty spikes, both men stood safely upon the platform of the pier.
Neither of them had ever been in Port Monmouth before, and perhaps that
was not Port Monmouth after all. How many planks were missing from the
shaky old pier? How far was it to shore? In what direction lay the
town? They must find it all out by feeling.
“That is all we want,” Dick called down to the boatman. “The tug can
take you back to the city. We are all right now.”
“Are we?” Hills panted. “I wish I thought so!”