“SHADOWING” THE CHIEF OF POLICE.
The gale threatened every moment to blow Dick and his companion from
the old pier; and while the lights of the tug became smaller and
smaller they felt their way carefully toward the shore.
“Let me go first,” Dick said, “as I am so much lighter. We might find
a rotten plank anywhere, or no plank at all. If there should be a wide
gap, I hardly know what we’d do, for we never could walk one of the
timbers in this wind.”
Fortunately there were no wide gaps and no planks too rotten to bear
their weight; and after traversing more than a hundred feet of pier,
putting a foot down carefully with every step before trusting much
weight upon it, they felt themselves upon the sand of New Jersey.
“I suppose the telegraph office must be the first thing for us to find,
if this is really Port Monmouth,” Dick suggested. “I should like to let
the office know that I am here.”
“So should I,” Mr. Hills responded; “and here is a good omen for us.”
The good omen was the first ray of light they had seen since leaving
the tug. Through an opening in the black clouds the moon was making a
sickly effort to shine. The light was very dim, but far better than the
intense darkness.
“There is a big house!” Dick exclaimed; “up this road, or street, or
whatever it is. We can rouse them up and find out where we are.”
They followed the sandy road up to the house, which looked like a
country tenement house, for it was large and neglected, and one of the
folding front doors stood open. They stepped up to the big piazza and
knocked, and in an instant there was a scraping and barking in the hall
as if a dozen dogs were after them. Dick and Hills were both brave
enough, but the pace they made down the walk and through the front gate
would have done them credit in a footrace.
“I see something moving up the road,” Hills exclaimed a moment later.
“Just this side of that clump of bushes. But I’m afraid it’s only a
white cow.”
“No, it’s not,” Dick shouted, looking in the direction indicated. “It’s
a white horse, and there’s a buggy behind it, and of course there’s
somebody in the buggy. But it’s turning off into another road. Hurry
up, Hills; we’ll intercept it.”
By cutting across a large open field they came out in another road
ahead of the buggy, and in a moment they were within speaking distance
of its occupant.
“Is this Port Monmouth, mister?” Dick asked.
There was no reply for a moment, and Dick repeated the question.
“Hello, Sumner! what are you doing here?” came a voice from the buggy.
“Of course this is Port Monmouth; and a beautiful little place it is,
for a blind man. Don’t you know my voice? I’m Atwater of the Herald. I
just drove up from Long Branch. How did you get here?”
“Hills of the World and I have just landed from a tug and been chased
by dogs,” Dick laughed. “We’re looking for the telegraph office and the
operator.”
“Don’t worry about that, my child,” Atwater said. “I have the operator
here in the buggy with me; picked him up as I passed his house. Follow
us, and we’ll be at the telegraph office in a minute or two.”
Dick and Hills followed the buggy, and soon the telegraph office was
reached and opened. Each man reported himself to his office by wire in
the same brief style:--
PORT MONMOUTH, N. J.
The Daily Transport, New York:
Arrived 11.30. SUMNER.
“The operator tells me he knows nothing about the chief of police being
here,” Atwater said, after the dispatches had been sent.
“Nice situation, isn’t it?” Hills exclaimed--“to hunt the chief in a
charming Jersey town without a light, where everybody is asleep.”
“It won’t do to take any chances,” Dick said. “How many houses are
there in the town, Atwater?”
“About forty or fifty,” Atwater replied; “little bit of a place.”
“Then it seems to me the only way is to visit every house and make
inquiries,” Dick suggested. “We can divide the town into sections, and
that will give us each about fifteen houses to go to.”
This heroic measure was agreed upon and the routes were laid out and
the three reporters began the process of arousing every family in Port
Monmouth. An hour later each one had rare stories to tell of encounters
with dogs and threats of arrest and wordy combats with sleepy and irate
householders. But there was no sign of the chief of police. The search
had been so thorough that it was certain he was not in Port Monmouth.
“It’s a false alarm,” Hills said in a disgusted tone. “Fine work this,
hunting a chief of police in a New Jersey forest.”
“And there’s an oyster supper a-cooking for me at home,” Dick added;
“and here I am, hungry as a bear.”
“Well, we can only send in ‘good-night’ and go to bed,” Atwater said
sadly. “I thought we were going to have a fine story. There’s a little
hotel here, and we can all go home in the morning.”
Dick’s second dispatch was very brief. It merely said, like the
dispatches of Hills and Atwater: “Chief not been seen here. Good-night.
Sumner.” The “good-night” was not a message of politeness, but a signal
well understood in the office that Sumner had nothing more to send.
“I’d like to know, Atwater,” Dick said when they were settling
themselves in a big double-bedded room in the hotel, “how you heard of
this thing in Long Branch.”
“Would you, sonny?” Atwater answered. He was very young himself, not
more than two or three years older than Dick, and they had met several
times before and had become well acquainted. “Then I’ll tell you. You
must know that before I became a distinguished journalist I was an
ornament to the telegraphic profession; in other words, I was a country
operator. Last evening I had some business in Long Branch, and while
waiting in the station for the train to take me home, I heard the
sounder say something about the chief of police. That made me prick up
my ears and listen to the message going through. It wasn’t intended
for me, but it may have gone to a worse man. It said that the chief
had come to Port Monmouth looking for Sterling’s body; and the minute
I heard that, I chartered a horse and buggy and drove up here. That
unravels the mystery, doesn’t it?”
It did, and at the same time it gave Dick an idea. “To understand
telegraph operating,” he thought, “must be a great advantage to a
reporter. This case is an example of it. I must learn enough of it, at
any rate, to send and receive a message.”
“Say, you fellows, dry up, will you?” Hill grunted from his bed. “I
want to go to sleep.”
To return to the office with nothing, after his midnight voyage in the
tug, was what Dick confidently expected. But he was not done with the
great Sterling’s body case yet.
Shortly after eight o’clock in the morning the three were awakened
by a racket downstairs. They heard rapid footsteps on the stairs,
and a moment later their door burst open and Lawrence bounded into
the room--Lawrence, the Transport man, who had been sent to cross
from Staten Island in a sailboat. He had reached Port Monmouth after
daylight.
“We’re going to have something to do yet, fellows,” he announced,
after greeting the three in bed. “The chief is certainly somewhere in
the State, though he’s not in Port Monmouth. I’ve just come from the
telegraph office, and the operator tells me he is in New Jersey. He is
trying to locate him for us.”
About two hours later Lawrence entered again with further news. “I’ve
found him,” he said. “The chief went down to Shamong last night, and
he’s still there.”
“Shamong? Where is Shamong?”
“Away down among the scrub pines. It’s down below Manchester and
Whiting’s, about a hundred and fifty miles from here.”
Dick bounded out of bed; he saw that there was probably more work
before him.
“Say, Sumner,” Hills said, his eyes half-open, “get my instructions for
me, will you, like a good fellow?”
“Yes, and mine too,” Atwater echoed; “there’s no use of our all getting
up at this unearthly hour.”
It was a matter of pride to Dick that these older reporters should feel
sure that he knew just what to do. He and Lawrence went down to the
telegraph office, and Dick wrote three messages. One of them said:--
Daily Transport, New York:--
Chief of police is at Shamong. Send instructions.
SUMNER--LAWRENCE.
The others were the same, but addressed one to the Herald and one to
the World, with Atwater’s name signed to the first and the name of
Hills to the other.
Several hours passed before replies were received to these messages,
and when they came Hills, Atwater, and Lawrence were ordered home and
Dick was instructed to “go on to Shamong and find the chief.”
That meant that Dick was to travel alone into the wilds of South Jersey
in search of the chief and Mr. Sterling’s body. He was sorry to go
alone, it was so much more pleasant to travel in good company; but
as far as the work was concerned he felt equal to it. Possibly, just
possibly, the chief might have found the body or caught the thieves;
and that would be a tremendous piece of news.
There was one difficulty about reaching Shamong, as he found by the
time-table. The only train of the afternoon went as far as Whiting’s,
fifteen miles north of Shamong, and stopped there. The only chance was
to go to Whiting’s and hire a carriage there to take him on to Shamong.
Daylight was fast changing into dusk when Dick’s train drew up at
Whiting’s. His first step was to go into the telegraph office. “When
out of town, always keep your wires open,” Dr. Goode once had told him;
and he had often found the advice valuable.
“Please ask Shamong to keep open late for a Transport special,” he said
to the operator.
“All right,” the operator answered. “I think you’ll have company down
there too.”
“What do you mean?” Dick asked.
“Well, I can’t tell all I know,” the operator replied; “but I think
you’ll not be the only reporter in Shamong to-night.”
“Oh, it’s like enough,” Dick laughed. “We generally travel in flocks.
I wish you would tell me where I can find somebody to drive me down
there.”
“Do you see that big white house with the green blinds?” and the
operator pointed down the street. “That’s Dr. Townsend’s house. The
doctor’s son has a horse and buggy for hire, and I guess he’ll drive
you down.”
But the doctor’s son, when Dick found him, seemed anything but anxious
to drive to Shamong that night. The roads were bad, he said, and
the night would be dark and his horse was lame and the buggy needed
mending, and there were a dozen other excuses. The more Dick urged, the
more excuses were made.
“I’ll drive you down there for five dollars,” the young man said at
last; and it was evident from his tone that he considered that so high
a price that it would put an end to the matter.
“Hitch him right up!” Dick answered. “I’m in a hurry to get there.”
The young man went out and returned in a few minutes to say that the
horse was ready. He went to a little stand in the room, opened the
drawer and took out a very small revolver and made a great show of
loading it.
“I never travel at night without being armed,” he said, evidently to
convince Dick that it would be useless to try to murder and rob him on
the road.
“It’s a good plan,” Dick coolly replied; “neither do I.”
That drive from Whiting’s to Shamong was an experience that Dick long
remembered. The road was a mere track through the pine woods, with
trees growing so close to the ruts that there was barely room for the
passage of the buggy. The young man drove so fast that Dick expected
every moment that one of the hubs would strike a tree and he be sent
sprawling over the horse’s back. He reached Shamong safely, however,
and went directly into the station and telegraph office, the only
building in the little hamlet that showed any sign of life, except the
hotel across the way. The livery bill was paid and the doctor’s son
headed his horse for Whiting’s without waiting for further developments.
“You’re looking for the chief, are you?” was the operator’s greeting
to Dick as the latter stepped into the stuffy little office in which
a dozen young countrymen with pipes and cigars in their mouths were
gathered. “Well, you’ll have to go on five miles farther to find him,
for he’s out at Mr. Waite’s place.”
“Five miles farther!” Dick exclaimed. “And who is Mr. Waite, and what
is the chief doing at his place?”
“He’s an old friend of the chief,” the operator answered, “and the
chief comes out here to shoot birds with him every year. That’s what
he is doing here now, and you fellows are all on a wild-goose chase.
I’ve had telegrams from about a dozen reporters to keep open for late
specials, but you won’t have any specials to send. He’s not looking for
anybody’s body out here, he’s shooting birds. There’s one of his guides
sitting on the table; the man in the big hat. You can ask him.”
Dick immediately began to question the guide, and it did not take him
long to find that the operator was telling the truth. There was no news
to be had, for the chief was only taking a little holiday instead of
hunting grave-robbers. He crossed over to the hotel and talked with
the landlord, and there the bird-shooting story was confirmed. It
was a tame ending to a long hunt, but there was no help for it. Dick
returned to the Telegraph office and he was hardly inside when one of
the loungers exclaimed:--
“There’s a locomotive coming up the road!”
Sure enough, there was the headlight staring them in the face. The
occupants of the office ran out to the platform just in time to see the
engine stop.
The young man who sprang from the engine before it came to a full stop
was the Philadelphia correspondent of The New York Herald. He had
heard by telegraph of the chief’s visit to Shamong, and as there was
no train he had chartered the locomotive to carry him to the spot.
While he stood talking to the operator, learning just what Dick had
learned, three carriages drove up, and several reporters whom Dick knew
ascended the station steps. There were five of them, four from the
principal morning newspapers of New York, and one from The Philadelphia
Age. These men had all been sent out in trains that carried them to
Manchester, a little town on another railroad about ten miles away,
and there they had taken carriages and started posthaste for Shamong,
arriving all together.
It was amusing to Dick to see this congregation of reporters, numbering
seven now, and no news for them to gather. He was in position to stand
by and see the others work, for he had been over the ground thoroughly.
But the businesslike way in which some of them went to work made him a
little uneasy. They seemed to know just the people to inquire for; and
perhaps their information might be better than his, after all. It was a
place for him to keep his eyes and ears open, at any rate.
“Where can I find Mr. Peter Smith?” was one of the first questions
asked by the Herald correspondent.
“I want to see Dave Hardy,” one of the others said to the operator;
“where does he live?”
It was a relief to Dick when he found that Peter Smith was the hotel
keeper with whom he had already talked, and that Dave Hardy was the
guide. The men separated, each one working in his own way; but in a
few minutes they were all back in the telegraph office; and all had
found out just what Dick knew before, that the chief was only out on a
pleasure excursion.
While there was news in prospect, these seven newspaper men had held
aloof from one another; each was suspicious of the others, and each
preferred to make his own inquiries without any confidence. But now
that the work was over, with no chance of anybody “beating” the others,
they were all the best of friends, and as jolly companions as a lot of
schoolboys just let out for recess.
“It would be folly for us to drive five miles out to see the chief,”
the Herald man said, “when we know that he is not here on business.
Anyhow he couldn’t do anything without coming here to the station
and telegraph office. There’s nothing for us to do but telegraph the
facts in a few words and go to bed. I’ve sent my engine back; it’s too
expensive a luxury to keep.”
“That’s all we can do,” echoed the World man, “as far as business goes.
But I have an important duty to perform. My stomach has been on strike
for the last three or four hours, and I’m going over to the hotel to
order some supper. Any of you fellows want to eat?”
“Yes, yes, yes!” burst from six other throats. “We all want to eat.
We’re starving, every one of us. Order suppers for seven, Mr. World,
to be ready in half an hour. Don’t forget the raw oysters and broiled
lobsters and about fourteen Welsh rarebits.”
“You’ll be lucky if you get ham and eggs,” said the Tribune man, who
knew the ways of country hotels. “But they’ll have some bottled Bass.
Let’s see; seven of us, are there? Have them put fourteen bottles of
Bass on ice, World.”
“None for me,” Dick interrupted; “I don’t want any Bass.”
“Twelve bottles then;” and the World man disappeared to arrange for the
suppers, while the others sat down on tables and boxes to write their
brief dispatches.
The loungers about the telegraph office, all greatly interested in the
scene, did not quite know what to make of these seven newspaper men.
Half an hour before they had avoided one another, had little to say,
and seemed to be at swords’ points; and now here they were chatting in
the most friendly way, as if they were all old friends, and ordering
suppers together.
While they were writing, the Age man touched Dick lightly upon the knee
and inclined his head toward the door in a way that meant an invitation
to come out. He was hardly older than Dick, the Age man; but he had
much more to say, and was inclined to be boisterous in his manner. Dick
followed him out to the platform.
“You’re from the Transport, ain’t you?” the Age reporter asked when
they were alone outside.
“Yes,” Dick replied.
“Well, I’ll put you up to a good thing, if you’ll take my advice.
There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a sensation out of this
business. Let the other fellows telegraph home that the chief is only
shooting birds, but you and I can do better. We can get up a column
apiece about the chief’s mysterious movements down here, and tell how
he’s supposed to be shadowing the thieves and to be on the track of the
body. I don’t want to do it alone; but if it’s in both the Age and the
Transport, that will give it an appearance of truth, and we’ll have a
beat on all the other fellows. Your people won’t like your coming home
without sending any copy.”
It was the first time that Dick had ever had such a proposition made to
him, and he was indignant.
“My people would rather have me come home a hundred times without copy
than send them a story that was not true,” he answered. “I like a
sensation, but I want it to be a real one; not one that I make myself.
They trust me to tell the truth when they send me out, and I intend to
do it.”
“Humbug!” the Age man sneered. “Do you think the Transport always tells
the truth?”
“As far as I know it does,” Dick answered. “I know its reporters pretty
well, and I don’t believe there is a man in the office who would
knowingly send in a false report. I know that I wouldn’t for one.”
The Age man said something about Dick being “too good for a newspaper
man” as they returned to the office and finished up their dispatches,
but Dick did not care to reply. He was sure of his ground; and it was
almost with satisfaction that he noticed afterwards that the other
reporters avoided the Age man--not on account of the proposition he had
made, for Dick said nothing about that, but because they were able to
read him through and through almost instantly, and saw that he was a
man to be avoided.
This is a faculty that comes quickly to a bright reporter, and it had
come already to Dick to a degree that sometimes startled him. From
talking with scores of new men every day--men who often had something
to conceal or something to exaggerate or something to distort--he had
learned to read a man’s heart and brain almost the instant he set eyes
upon him.
“That Tribune man is a prophet,” somebody exclaimed at supper. “He said
ham and eggs, and ham and eggs it is. But they’re wonderfully better
than nothing.”
It was a surprise to Dick that nobody said a word to him about
drinking ale while they were eating. All the others drank it and after
supper smoked cigars, but Dick neither drank nor smoked. Instead of
being urged, he was left to follow his own inclinations. And the
best men in the party, he was glad to notice, treated him like a
professional equal. Some of the men there were favorably known in every
newspaper office in New York, and Dick had often heard of them. He was
too modest even to think that it was because he had attended to his
work faithfully and well, without bluster or boasting, that these men
liked him; but that was the reason. They read him as easily as they
read the Age man, but with different results.
Dick and the World man were quartered in the same room for the night,
for the little hotel had not seven sleeping rooms to spare.
“I’m afraid it looked unsociable not to take a glass of ale or a cigar
with the rest at supper,” Dick said before they went to sleep; “but I
have made up my mind neither to drink nor smoke, and I couldn’t break
my resolution.”
“Unsociable!” his companion repeated; “why, you were one of the
jolliest fellows in the party! There’s nothing unsociable about not
drinking ale when you don’t want it. The talk about drinking for
sociability’s sake is very much in your eye, Sumner. When a man drinks
it’s because he wants the stimulant, not because he wants to be
sociable. That was why I drank the ale, and I’ll warrant it was the
same with all the other fellows.”
“Well, it was very kind in you all not to urge me to drink or smoke
when I didn’t want to,” Dick said.
“No; you’re mistaken!” the World man retorted, resting his head upon
his hand, and his elbow on the pillow. “Excuse me; but I’m a much older
man than you, Sumner, and I know these things better. Reporters are
supposed to have some sense, and a sensible man never urges a fellow to
drink who doesn’t want to. When a man tries to urge you against your
will, it is safe to set that man down for a fool.
“Not only that,” he went on, “but it’s only a softshell who could be
induced to drink when he didn’t want to. Such a man would hardly have
brains enough to make a good reporter, and I hear you’re a pretty good
one, Sumner. No, sir! I take my share of drinks, I’ll admit, but if I
didn’t want one, I should like to see the man who could induce me to
take it; and I should have a very poor opinion of any man who tried,
too. However, it’s after midnight, and the early train goes at six;”
and the World man, totally disregarding the hygienic principles that he
often wrote paragraphs about, drew his head completely under the covers.
Dick thought that he had just fallen asleep for a moment, though in
reality he had slept for several hours, when at half-past five the
red-haired, freckle-faced boy of the hotel made a tremendous racket
with his knuckles against the doors of the reporters’ rooms.
“Wake up, gents,” he shouted. “The chief of police is over at the
station, waitin’ for the early train!”
In five minutes the reporters were all at the station with the chief,
and he was joking them about their wild-goose chase.
“I’m glad I got the better of you once, boys,” he laughed; “but it was
accidental. It would take a smarter man than I am to fool you fellows
on purpose. I’m too smart to try it, anyhow.”
In the ride back to New York Dick became well acquainted with the
chief of police, and the acquaintance often proved valuable to him
afterwards. When he reached the office he gave the city editor a full
account of his adventures.
“It often happens,” the editor said as he laughed with Dick over his
odd experiences, “that the reporter’s adventures in gathering news
would make a more interesting article than the news he goes after; but
we seldom print the reporter’s side of it. However, I think we will
make an exception in this case and let you write us a special about
your experiences in hunting Sterling’s body. Make it about a column and
a half. We pay extra, of course, for breezy specials.”