LONG years unheard yet unforgotten, the voice of Edwin Garson,
President Montrose Clark’s hand-perfected private secretary, warbled
with a mellifluous intonation over the telephone wire into the surprised
ear of The Guardian’s editor and owner.
“Hello! Hello? _Hel_-lo!... This Mr. Robson?... Office of the Fenchester
Public Utilities. Mr. Montrose Clark wishes to see you.”
An unfortunate formula. It recalled the vivid past. One sweetly solemn
thought in Jeremy’s mind was forthwith transmuted into one briefly
pregnant speech which shocked the private secretary clean off the
wire. Jeremy resumed his editorializing. His next interruption, to his
incredulous astonishment, took the important form and presence of Mr.
Montrose Clark himself. Mahomet had come to the mountain.
At Jeremy’s invitation Mr. Clark disposed his neat and pursy form upon
the far edge of a chair impressively, yet with obvious reservations, as
one disdaining to concede anything to comfort. Embarrassment might
have been conjectured in one less august. His voice was as stiff as his
posture as he began:
“I had my secretary telephone you, Mr. Robson.”
“I got your message.”
“And I your reply, which, as transmitted to me, was that I might go to
the devil!”
“I think I mentioned the place, not the proprietor.”
“It does not signify. I am here”--there was no glimmer of light on the
round red countenance to suggest an ulterior meaning--“I am here on a
matter of business, in my capacity as acting president of the Drovers’
Bank in Mr. Warrington’s absence. As such, I have to inform you that we
stand ready to make you a loan on favorable terms upon the security of
The Guardian.”
“Wh-wh-why?” stammered Jeremy, taken wholly aback. “Do you consider the
paper a sound risk now?”
“Sufficiently sound.”
“Up to what amount?”
“Any amount you need.”
Jeremy stared at him, unbelieving.
“No security I can furnish now is as good as that which you rejected
before.”
“That may very well be true.”
“Yet your offer is still open?”
“It is.”
“Ah, yes!” said Jeremy, thinking slowly and carefully. “You’re assuming
that, with the change in the local political situation, The Guardian is
going to shift its principles. Well, Mr. Clark, if you expect that we’re
going back one inch from the stand we’ve taken on public utilities, and
the P.-U. Corporation in particular, you’re badly fooled. We’re just as
much against you as if we were still for Governor Embree. I thought I
had made that clear to Judge Dana.”
“I have proposed no bargain,” stated the magnate aridly. “I make an
offer. No conditions are attached.”
“Then I’ve got to tell you frankly that we’re not doing very well.”
“So I am informed. What appears to be the trouble? Will the new paper
cut into your circulation to an extent--”
“Newspapers do not live by circulation alone, Mr. Clark, but chiefly by
advertising.”
“Certainly; certainly. Local merchants appear to be pretty well
represented in your pages.”
“At reduced space--or worse. Take the case of Vogt, the florist, who has
always been good for a hundred dollars a month with us. Perhaps you can
point out Mr. Vogt’s present space in The Guardian.”
The visitor ran through the paper handed to him.
“I fail to find Mr. Vogt’s advertisement.”
“He’s out.”
“Why?”
“Because The Guardian has been ‘corrupted by British gold.’”
“Indeed! Did he express that theory to you personally?”
“He did. He also instructed me as to running my paper, and gave me the
outlines of an editorial demanding that none of our soldiers be sent
abroad to help in the war. When I said that I was n’t interested
in pro-German strategy he said something else, in German, which
unfortunately I understand a little; and then ‘Police!’”
“Police?” repeated Mr. Clark, with hopeful interest. “Why did he say
that?”
“I suppose he thought I was going to throw him downstairs. I was n’t. I
left him carefully on the top step.” Signs of perturbation appeared upon
the visage of the little magnate. He rose. His projective eyes appeared
no longer to feel at home in his face. They roved afar. “Police!” he
murmured, and added “Ah!” in a curious, relishing tone. Suddenly he
thrust out a pudgy hand, clawed at Jeremy’s unready fingers, murmured
“Count on us, Mr. Robson, for anything we can do!”--and stalked out.
“Now, how do you account for him?” inquired Jeremy, referring the matter
to Galpin, who had come in to announce another withdrawal.
“Oh, him!” Galpin turned the public utilitarian over in his mind,
considering him on all sides. “Wants to use us to club the Governor, I
reckon. Now that we’ve quit ‘Smiling Mart,’ plenty of our old enemies
will be willing to play with us on the theory that there’ll be a change
in policy.”
“They’ll have to make a better guess than that.”
“I guess you’re right, Boss,” sighed the other. “Even if we did borrow,
it’d only be postponing the finish. Things won’t get any better for
us while the war is on. And when the showdown comes where would The
Guardian be if we were in for twenty thousand more?”
“In the hands of the Drovers’ Bank.”
“There or thereabouts. Well, I can’t just see us being editorial
copy-boys for President Puff. Can you?”
“Not exactly! Yet, you know, Andy, he gave me almost the impression of
being really for us.”
“Well, it’s possible, Boss; it’s just possible”--the other’s shrewd face
was puckered in conjecture--“that he might consider this war thing more
important than his own little interests. A man who thinks different from
us on every other blooming subject under the sun might be every bit as
real an American when it comes to the pinch. Ever think of that, Boss?”
“Not just that way.”
“Time enough to find out. Where the lion jumps, the jackal follows. See
if Old Slippery Dana does n’t come round in the next few days.”
Come round Judge Dana did. That candid honesty of expression and
demeanor which had aided him in pulling off some of his most dubious
tricks was never more markedly in evidence than when he shook hands with
Jeremy.
“Ever give any thought to the libel suits against you in the office of
Dana & Dana?” he began.
“Some.”
“Bother you any?”
“I’m not losing sleep over them.”
“Now, I’ll admit candidly,” said the lawyer, “that a couple of ’em
are no good. They’re dead. But there’s merit in Madam Taylor’s case. You
went too far there. Your own lawyers will tell you that.”
“They have,” said Jeremy incautiously, and bit his lip.
“Well, in spite of that, I’ve come to tell you that we’ve advised our
client to withdraw the action.”
“Have you?” said the editor warily. “Why?”
“Call it friendship.”
“On your part? For The Guardian?”
“We-ell; say it’s because I foresee that the paper is going to have
plenty of troubles of its own without our adding to them.”
“You haven’t always been so solicitous as to The Guardian’s welfare.”
“Meaning that you would like to understand the reason for my present
solicitude?”
“_Timeo Danaos_,’” quoted Jem. “I fear the Danas bearing gifts.”
The lawyer smiled his appreciation.
“I’ve given you the best reason I know.”
“Did Montrose Clark send you here?”
“You don’t like Mr. Clark much, do you?”
“Not particularly.”
“Nor me, either, perhaps?”
“I blush to say that I rather do.”
“But you don’t trust me.”
“Oh, come, Dana! What would you expect!”
“Just for relaxation of the mind, my young friend, what do you think of
me?”
“Straight?”
“Straight.”
“I think you’re a slippery old legal crook,” returned Jeremy without
hesitation.
“And I think you’re a flitter-witted young fool--ninety-nine times out
of a hundred!”
“And the hundredth?”
“That’s what I’m looking at now. By God, you’re an American,
anyway! Here, Jem,” he leaned across the table, extending a bony and
argumentative forefinger; “if you and I were in the trenches, fighting
shoulder to shoulder, it would n’t make a pickle’s worth of difference
whether you were a sapheaded loon or not, or whether I was a crook or a
thief or a murderer, or not. All we’d have to ask of each other would be
that we were fighting in the same cause, and with the last drop of our
blood, and to the finish! Am I right?”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Well, then! What’s this we’re up against right here in Fenchester? Are
we fighting? Or playing tiddledy-winks?”
“There’s very little tiddledywinks in it, so far as The Guardian is
concerned,” confessed Jeremy with a wry face.
“So far as any of us are concerned. It’s coming to the place where it’s
a case of get together and stick together for us Americans. Seen Magnus
Laurens since the Governor’s little soirée?”
“No,” answered Jem, flushing.
“Laurens thought you were in on Embree’s deal. Why don’t you put him
right?”
“He can put himself right,” returned the editor shortly.
“Hardly that; but he can be put right. There are a lot of things that
ought to be put right for you, my boy. Things that have been wrong for a
long time.”
He leaned to Jeremy again, his long face alight with an eager and
innocent candor.
“Jem, there’s no use fighting your friends. The people that can help
you, the people that are the real Americans of your kind, you’ve always
opposed. Come in with us now. There’s nothing that won’t be done for you
and The Guardian. I’m going to talk plain talk. Isn’t it about time you
made up your mind to be good?”
“How be good? What’s on the carpet now?”
“Why, this fight against the pacifists and pro-Germans.”
“You don’t have to tell me to be good for that. Something else is up.”
He eyed the lawyer with a bitter grin. “I might have known you had
something up your sleeve. What is it, the Blanket Franchise Bill again?”
“That’s a perfectly fair bill,” defended the visitor. “But for The
Guardian, it would have gone through before. Now--”
“Now we’ll kill it again if it shows its crooked head. Tell Montrose
Clark that from me. And tell him that I won’t need any loan from the
Drovers’ Bank to do it.”
“Very well,” sighed the lawyer. “No hard feelings, my boy. Business is
business.”
Reporting to his chief, Dana stated:
“He won’t dicker.”
“As I told you,” replied Montrose Clark in pompous self-appreciation of
his own prophecy.
“Well, no harm in trying.... We can pass the Blanket Franchise Bill
after The Guardian is dead.”
“How long can it last?”
“Not three months, according to what I can gather.” The president of the
Fenchester Public Utilities Corporation began to puff up and grow red in
the face and squirm in his seat. Finally it came out explosively: “Dana,
I don’t want to pass the damned bill--at that price.”
“Neither do I.”
“You know, I--I almost like that young fool.”
“So do I.”
“Well, what are we going to do?”
“Pull him through whether he wants our help or not. We can fight him for
the Franchise Bill after the war.”
“Go to it!” returned the president of the Fenchester Public Utilities
Company with unwonted energy and slang.
As the first fruits of that confabulation between two of Jeremy Robson’s
oldest enemies The Guardian received on the following day a contract
from the P.-U. for advertising space amounting to sixteen hundred
dollars a year. Jeremy reckoned that with grim satisfaction, as giving
the paper a few days more of life. On the following morning there came a
far more important help in the form of ‘a brief and characteristic note
from Magnus Laurens, the pith of which was in these sentences:
_I hope you will accept my sincere apologies. Enclosed find contract
with the Oak Lodge Pulp Company, which, I have reason to believe, was
made under a misapprehension as to quality of paper. Kindly make out new
contract at three cents and three quarters if acceptable._
Andy Galpin’s philosophical estimate--“Every bit as real an American,
when it comes to the pinch”--reverted to Jeremy’s mind. A sudden
humility tempered his spirit. He felt that The Guardian was a pretty big
thing and he a pretty small one. Well, in what time remained he would
fight with a new vigor and for a broader ideal. It would not be long.
Magnus Laurens’s generosity meant only a respite; perhaps two or three
months extra of fighting the good fight. In the owner’s heart was no
self-deception as to the inevitable outcome. Meantime the paper might
yet beat Martin Embree and save Centralia from the disgrace of sending
the chosen prophet of Deutschtum to the United States Senate.
And just for itself, how well worth fighting for and with to the finish
was the battered, gallant old Guardian! Jeremy thought of his paper as
a Captain might think of his ship staggering, unconquered but hopeless,
through her last storm to her last port; thought of her with that sort
of devotion, of passion. And the precious freight of hope and faith
and belief that she carried, the loyal confidence of the simple, clean,
honest people for whom he had made the paper!
Strange and unexpected accessions had come to that number; none stronger
than the stubborn and violent jeweler, Bernard Stockmuller, who had
abused Jeremy on the street after the first trouble with the Deutscher
Club.
On the morning after the Constantia was sunk, with the first American
naval victims, an event upon which Jeremy had poured out the hot
fervency of his patriotism, his door was thrust open and the powerful
form of the German burst in. His face was a dull, deep red. His eyes
protruded. He was gasping.
Believing that he had to do with a man crazed by fury, Jeremy jumped
to his feet and set himself. The expected rush followed, but ended in a
stagger, a gulp, and a burst of unashamed tears.
“Dot bee-ewtiful tribude!” sobbed the emotional German. “Dot bee-ewtiful
tribude dot you haf printed in your paper to our boys. To my boy!”
“Your boy? Why, Stockmuller, I did n’t know--”
“All the boy I got. My nephew, Henry. Him I brought up and put through
the Ooniversity. He iss dead. He hass gone down in the Constantia. I
am glad he iss dead so splendid! I am proud when I read what you have
written. Und--und, Mr. Robson, I wand you should--I wand you should--”
“Go on, Stockmuller,” said Jeremy gently, as the other stopped with a
pleading look. “Of course I’ll do it--whatever it is you want.”
“I wand you should take my ad back,” said Stockmuller as simply as a
child.
“You bet I’ll take it back!”
“Mind! I dink you wass wrong, first off,” said the honest and obstinate
German. “I dink Inkland made dis war. But my Henry, all the boy I got,
if he iss only a nephew, iss dead for dis country. And now dis iss my
country and my war!”
“All right, Stockmuller. Glad to have you with us,” was all that Jeremy,
pretty well shaken by the other’s emotion, found to say. The visitor
produced a large and ornate handkerchief, wherewith he openly wiped his
swollen eyes.
“Also, dere is someding else,” he stated, lowering his voice. The editor
looked his inquiry. “Monkey business with your printer-men.”
“Yes; I know something about that.”
“Do you know when they strike?”
“No. When?”
“The day before the new paper comes out.”
Jeremy whistled softly.
“Of course! That’s when they would, assuming that it’s a put-up job from
outside. Where do you get your information?--if it’s a fair question.”
Stockmuller turned a painful red.
“I was on der Deutscher Club committee,” he said. “The segret committee.
No more!”
“Who are the men in our press-room they’re working through?”
The visitor shook his head. “Weiss nicht,” he murmured.
“Never mind; I know! I’ll start something for ’em before they’re
ready.”
Jem had now definitely fixed upon Nick Milliken, the white-haired,
vehement Socialist, as the chief instigator of trouble upstairs. He no
longer suspected Milliken of being in the underground employ of Montrose
Clark and Dana. He believed him to be the agent of Bausch and the
Deutscher Club committee. He sent for the man and discharged him.
Milliken took his discharge, at first, in a spirit of incredulity.
“Me?” he said. “What have you got it in for me for?”
“You’re a trouble-maker. That’s enough.”
“Because I’m a Socialist? Look-a-here, Mr. Robson--”
“There’s no use in arguing, Milliken. I won’t have you around.”
“Give me a week,” said the other. “I can tell you some--”
“Not a day! Get your pay this noon.”
The man hesitated; then with a sardonic, but not particularly hostile
grin he bade his employer good-day.
“Now for the strike!” said Jeremy to Andy Galpin.
But the strike did not come. Evidently the manipulators in the
background would bide their own time.