SOMETHING queer happened to young Mr. Jeremy Robson on the night of July
10th. Despite a lumpy sensation in the back of his neck and his habitual
effect of being absolutely fagged out by the day’s work, he had gone to
bed with the resilient assurance of youth that he would awake refreshed
and fit in the morning. Instead, he woke up feeling aged beyond the
power of the mind to grasp: a mere crumbling ruin, compared to which the
pyramid of Cheops was a parvenu and the Druidic altars of Stonehenge
the mushroom growth of a paltry yesterday. Worse than this, there was a
dregsy, bitter taste in his soul. It grew and spread; and presently as
he lay miserably wondering at it, developed into a gall-and-worm-wood
loathing of the circumstanding world’s activities, but particularly
of his work, the purposeless, futile, inexorable toil of The Guardian,
daily re-galvanized into the appearance of life, but in reality doomed
to swift and hopeless dissolution.
For a moment his thoughts turned from hatred to Marcia. A receding
vision, “the lands of Dream among,” hopelessly beyond the reach of a
Failure. Inexpressibly old, Mr. Jeremy Robson wrote “Finis” upon the
scroll of his fate and sat up in bed the better to contemplate the
wreckage which had been himself. Immediately things began to revolve
in his head. Wheels. Andrew Galpin’s wheels. Wheels of all sizes
and brutally distorted shapes whirling in counter-directions with an
imbecile and nauseous suavity, weaving into unendurable patterns the
warp and woof of his comprehensive hatred.
“Bosh!” said Jeremy Robson. He stood up and promptly fell down.
“Too much pressure,” pronounced Doc Summerfield, arriving at speed. “You
stop, young man, or you’ll be stopped.”
“Give me something to steady me up,” begged Jeremy. “I’ve got to go to
the office to-day!”
“Have you?” returned the physician grimly. “Drink this.”
Sleep descended powerfully upon Jeremy, blotting out hatreds and worries
and all other considerations for the time. It held him in its toils for
successive days and nights; how many he could not have told. Once he
woke up, quite clear in his head, and looked out across a broad piazza,
through elms and shrubbery upon the crested lake, and was about to
congratulate himself upon his recovery (though he could not quite figure
out to what pleasant spot he had been translated) when Mrs. Montrose
Clark came into the room--which was, of course, delirium--and asked him
how he felt and whether he was hungry. Later Doc Summerfield arrived,
declined to explain, said, “Drink this” (he was always and forever
saying, “Drink this”) “and I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.”
So, on the morrow--or it might have been the following century for
all Jeremy knew--Doc Summerfield came back and delivered a syncopated
monologue:
“Yes. You are at Mr. Montrose Clark’s cottage.... No; you certainly
can’t go home. Don’t be a jackass!... No; the paper has n’t gone up.
It’s doing very well without you.... No; of course you’re not going down
to the office. Don’t be a fool!... Heart? No; it isn’t your heart. It’s
nerves. Overwork. That’s all. Don’t be a ninny.... Certainly you’ll be
all right. In a few days, if you’ll behave yourself and not act like a
blithering simpleton.... Drink this.”
What seemed to Jeremy so long and uncertain a period was, in reality,
only a little over a week. Came a day when the Montrose Clarks sent
him out for a ride with their chauffeur, otherwise unattended, and he
prevailed upon that guileless youth to take him to the office.
“Don’t wait. I’ll telephone,” said he, and made for his den.
At first, as he entered, he felt a qualm of nausea. This passed, to be
succeeded by a dull languor. He shook this off and, finding that wheels
no longer revolved within his head when he tried to think, he decided
that he was fit for work. Pursuing this theory, he settled to his
work-table when the door burst open and Andrew Galpin rushed in.
“Where the devil--” he began and started back as from an apparition.
“For the love of _Mike!_” he shouted. “Where did you come from?”
“The Montrose Clark cottage.”
“Go back! Get out! You ought to be in bed.”
“I have been. I’m tired of it.”
“What would Doc Summerfield say?”
“The usual thing: Drink this.’ What do you suppose he’d say to you?”
The general manager was red, perspiring, and disheveled, and there was a
vague, wild, and incomprehensible gleam in his eye.
“Me? What’s he got to do with me?”
“How do I know? You don’t look--well, normal.”
“Don’t I!” retorted his subordinate with some heat. “Then just lemme
tell you that I’m the only normal gink left in the business. I’m sane;
_that’s_ what’s the matter with _me!_ That’s what makes me look so queer
and feel so lonely.”
“You’d have to prove it to me,” retorted his chief. “That’s because
you’ve got it, too. Only yours takes a different form from the rest. Go
back to bed, Boss. But first, where’s that file of special contracts?”
“Try the cabinet there. What do you want of ’em?”
Galpin found the documents, and turned upon Jeremy. “Boss, this man’s
town had gone batty. Plumb bugs! Hopeless case.”
“You know what happens to a man who discovers that everybody else is
crazy, Andy.”
“It’s gone completely nuts over The Guardian,” pursued the other,
ignoring the intimation. “We’re a hobby. An obsession. A fad! A fashion!
A killing! A--”
“What’s got you, Andy?” asked the editor anxiously. “Come down to
earth.”
“Can’t! I’m a balloon. Watch me soar!” The usually stolid manager
performed a bacchanalian fling. “Contracts!” he panted. “Reams of ’em!
Money! Gobs of it! Circulation! Going uh-uh-up! Whee!”
“Andy, I’m not feeling very husky; but in a moment I shall throw you
down and sit on your neck.”
“Can’t be done! I could lick the Kaiser and all his Botches
single-handed. Boss, the luck has broke! The town is coming our way.”
“How? Why? What’s happened?”
“I’d like to tell you, but I have n’t got time. They’re waiting for me
downstairs.”
“Who?”
“Advertisers. Waiting to break into The Guardian. They’re lined up in
the hallways. I’ll have to issue rain-checks.”
“Stop talking like a lunatic, Andy, and explain.”
The demented manager perched upon the corner of the editorial table,
with an effect of being poised for instant flight.
“Don’t ask me to explain, because I can’t. I tell you the advertisers of
this town have suddenly got a mania--and we’re the mania. It began two
days ago and it’s been growing worse right along. I did n’t think I’d
ever be able to break through to the office this morning. They waylaid
me on the way down. I don’t know who began it. I think it was Stormont,
of Stormont & Lehn. He fell out of a doorway on me, and when I got loose
there was a thousand-dollar advertising contract stuck down my collar.
Then old Pussy-foot Ellison came sobbing up the street--”
“What the devil--”
“Don’t interrupt me or I’ll bust! And never mind my metaphors. It comes
easier that way. Well, he blubbered out his sweet message of intending
to double his space in the paper instead of cutting us out; and before
I’d got his tears fairly brushed off my shoulder, Vogt, the Botch,
rushed in, threw his arms round my neck and tried to kiss me, and handed
me an eight-hundred-dollar-space order in lieu of damages; and asked
whether we would n’t like flowers sent round mornings, gratis! Boss, I
can just see you writing an editorial with one of Vogt’s tea-roses stuck
coyly behind your ear--”
“Never mind my ear. Go on!”
“How can I remember who mobbed me! I do recall that Arndt, of the
furniture shop, knocked me down and dragged me into an alley; and when
I came to there was a signed agreement to restore all the space they
lifted from us, and twenty-five per cent over and above. And, by the
way, I saw the Governor hiking into Bausch’s office and looking about as
cheerful as a banshee with a bellyache. Oh, there’s big doings of some
kind, you bet! All the morning the ’phone has been buzzing and--Who’s
that having hysterics in the hall?”
He threw open the door, and Mr. Adolph Ahrens, of The Great Northwestern
Stores, bounded in, uttering a wild, low wail, the burden of which
seemed to be something about a “misunderstanding.” He also mentioned the
word “blackmail,” and hastily retracted it. He had always, he asserted
passionately, been friendly to The Guardian. He admired it for its
lofty courage, its unfailing fair-mindedness, its patriotism; and as an
advertising medium he considered it without parallel or equal.
In token of which he had brought his copy for a full page in that day’s
issue. And would Mr. Robson kindly note that he had taken a box for the
Loyalty Rally on Saturday, being as good an American as anybody, even
if he did bear a German name? And so, exit Mr. Ahrens, stringing out
deprecatory statements about a misunderstanding as he went.
“For Heaven’s sake, Andy, what does it all mean?” The general manager
shook his disheveled head.
“Search me!” he said gravely. “Except for this: It means that The
Guardian wins.”
“Have you reckoned it up?”
“Don’t need to. Outside a few of the Old Prussian Guard in the Deutscher
Club we’ve got everything back that we lost, and a heap more on top of
it.”
“But who’s been doing it? And what have they been doing?” cried the
bewildered Jeremy.
“Not guilty on either count. Somebody’s been impressing our friends,
the enemy, that there’s just one way to be saved, and that the only
A1, guaranteed salvation is via The Guardian. Watch ’em crowd to the
mourners’ seat.”
“What’s the paper been doing since I--”
“Not a thing. Not a blooming thing, Boss, but just sawing wood. This
game was n’t started from inside. I’ll swear to that. Whoever’s been
doing the trick--and it looks to me as if there’d been some expert and
ree-fined blackmail going on--has been keeping clear of us.”
“Judge Dana!” exclaimed Jeremy, struck with a thought.
“Well, I’ve been sort of wondering about him myself,” admitted the
other. “Met him on the street yesterday and he wanted me to call him up
as soon as you got back.”
“All right. Here I am.”
“Ay-ah? You’ve got to show me. You’re not back till Doc Summerfield says
you’re back.”
The door opened and the amazed physiognomy of Buddy Higman appeared.
“The Boss!” he exclaimed. “Holy Moses! I’m a liar.”
“What’s up, Buddy?”
“I’ve been stallin’ off Doc Summerfield and a crazy show-foor
downstairs. They’re waitin’ now. They said would you come peaceable or
be took. I told ’em you’d never been near here.”
“Tell ’em I’ll come peaceably, Buddy,” said the editor wearily. He
turned to Andrew Galpin. “Andy.”
“Ay-ah?”
“You’re sure this is straight? You’re sure you’re not the one that’s
crazy? Or I?”
“Am I sure! Go out the front way, Boss, and see the line waiting.
That’ll convince you. I tell you, unless something busts, we’ll win out
sure.”
Hardly could the editor and owner of The Guardian, led away by Doc
Summerfield in deep disgrace, assimilate the hope of ultimate victory
for his paper and himself. He dared not let himself believe in it yet,
because of the intruding thought of Marcia and of what triumph might
mean to him.