THE WARNING
Tradition of the "Clarion" office embalms "the evening the typhus story
broke" as a nightmare out of which was born history. Chronologically,
according to the veracious records of Bim the Guardian of Portals, the
tumult began at exactly 10.47, with the arrival of Mr. McGuire Ellis,
traveling up the staircase five steps at a jump and calling in a
strangled voice for Wayne. That usually controlled journalist rushed out
of an inner room in alarm, demanding to know whether New York City had
been whelmed with a tidal wave or the King of England murdered in his
bed, and in an instant was struggling in the grasp of his fellow editor.
"What's left of the epidemic spread?" demanded the new arrival
breathlessly.
"The killed story?"
"What's left of it?" clamored Ellis, dancing all over his colleague's
feet. "Can you find the copy? Notes? Anything?"
"Proofs," said Wayne. "I saved a set."
Ellis sat down in a chair and regarded his underling with an expression
of stupefied benevolence.
"Wayne," he said, "you're a genius. You're the fine flower and perfect
blossom of American journalism. I love you, Wayne. With passionate
fervor, I love you. Now, _gitta move on_!!!" His voice soared and
exploded. "We're going to run it to-morrow!"
"To-morrow? How? It isn't up to date. Nobody's touched it since--"
"Bring it up to date! Fire every man in the office out on it. Tear the
hide off the old paper and smear the story all over the front page. Haul
in your eyes and _start_!"
The whirl of what ensued swamped even Bim's cynic and philosophic calm.
Amidst a buzz of telephones and a mighty scurrying of messengers the
staff of the "Clarion" was gathered into the fold, on a
"drop-everything" emergency call, and instantly dispersed again to the
hospitals, the homes of the health officials, the undertakers'
establishments, the cemeteries, and all other possible sources of
information. The composing-room seethed and clanged. Copy-readers yelled
frantically through tubes, and received columns of proofs which, under
the ruthless slaughter of their blue pencils, returned as "stickfuls,"
that room might be made for the great story. Cable news was slashed
right and left. Telegraph "skeletons" waited in vain for their bones to
be clothed with the flesh of print. The Home Advice Department sank with
all on board, and the most popular sensational preacher in town, who had
that evening made a stirring anti-suffrage speech full of the most
unfailing jokes, fell out of the paper and broke his heart. The carnage
in news was general and frightful. Two pages plus of a story that
"breaks" after 10 P.M. calls for heroic measures.
At 10.53 Mr. Harrington Surtaine arrived, hardly less tempestuously than
his predecessor. He did not even greet Bim as he passed through the
gate, which was unusual; but went direct to Ellis.
"Can we do it, Mac?"
"The epidemic story? Yes. There was a proof saved."
"Good. Can you do the story of the meeting?"
Ellis hesitated. "All of it?"
"Every bit. Leave out nothing."
"Hadn't you better think it over?"
"I've thought."
"It'll hit the old--your father pretty hard."
"I can't help it."
A surge of human pity overswept Ellis's stimulated journalistic
keenness. "You don't _have_ to do this, Hal," he suggested. "No other
paper--"
"I do have to do it," retorted the other. "And worse."
Ellis stared.
"I've got to print the story of Milly's death: the facts just as they
happened. And I've got to write it myself."
The professional zest surged up again in McGuire Ellis. "My Lord!" he
exclaimed. "_What a paper to-morrow's 'Clarion' will be!_ But why? Why?
Why the Neal story--now?"
"Because I can't print the epidemic spread unless I print the other.
I've given my word. I told my father if ever I suppressed news for my
own protection, I'd give up the fight and play the game like all the
other papers. I've tried it. Mac, it isn't my game."
"No," replied his subordinate in a curious tone, "it isn't your game."
"You'll write the meeting?"
"Yes."
"Save out a column for my story."
Ellis returned to Wayne at the news desk. "Hell's broke loose at the
Emergency Health meeting," he remarked, employing the conventional
phrasing of his craft.
And Wayne, in the same language, inquired:
"How much?"
"Two columns. And a column from the Boss on another story."
"Whew!" whistled Wayne. "We _shall_ have some paper."
From midnight until 2.30 in the morning the reporters on the great story
dribbled in. Each, as he arrived, said a brief word to Wayne, got a curt
direction, slumped into his seat, and silently wrote. It was all very
methodical and quiet and orderly. A really big news event always is
after the first disturbance of adjustment. Newspaper offices work
smoothest when the tension is highest.
At 12.03 A.M. Bim received two flurried Aldermen and the head of a city
department. At 12.35 he held spirited debate with the Deputy
Commissioner of Health. Just as the clock struck one, two advertising
managers, arriving neck and neck, merged their appeals in an ineffectual
attempt to obtain information from the youthful Cerberus, which he
loftily declined to furnish, as to the whereabouts of anyone with power
to ban or bind, on the "Clarion." At 1.30 the Guardian of the Gate had
the honor and pleasure of meeting, for the first time, his Honor the
Mayor of the City. Finally, at 1.59 he "took a chance," as he would have
put it, and, misliking the autocratic deportment of a messenger from
E.M. Pierce, told that emissary that he could tell Mr. Pierce exactly
where to go to--and go there himself. All the while, unmoved amidst
protestation, appeal, and threat, the steady news-machine went on
grinding out unsuppressible history for itself and its city.
Sharp to the regular hour, the presses clanged, and the building
thrilled through its every joint to the pulse of print. Hal Surtaine
rose from his desk and walked to the window. McGuire Ellis also rose,
walked over and stood near him.
"Three pretty big beats to-morrow," he said awkwardly, at length.
"The Milly Neal story won't be a beat," replied Hal.
"No? How's that?"
"I've sent our proofs to all the other papers."
"Well, I'm--What's the idea?
"We lied to them about the story in the first instance. They played
fair, according to the rules, and took our lie. We can't beat 'em on our
own story, now."
"Right you are. Bet none of 'em prints it, though." Wherein he was a
true prophet.
There was a long, uneasy pause.
"Hal," said Ellis hesitantly.
"Well?"
"I'm a fool."
The white weariness of Hal's face lit up with a smile. "Why, Mac--" he
began.
"A pin-head," persisted the other stubbornly. "A block of solid ivory
from the collar up. I'm--I'm _young_ in the head," he concluded, with
supreme effort of self-condemnation.
"It's all right," said his chief, perfectly knowing what Ellis meant.
"Have I said enough?"
"Plenty."
"You didn't put Veltman in your story?"
"No. What was the good?"
"That's right, too."
"Good-night, Mac, I'm for the hotel."
"Good-night, Hal. See you in the morning."
"Yes. I'll be around early."
Ellis's eyes followed his chief out through the door. He returned to his
desk and sat thinking. He saw, with pitiless clearness, the storm
gathering over the "Clarion": the outburst of public hostility, the
depletion of advertisers and subscribers, the official opposition
closing avenues of information, the disastrous probabilities of the
Pierce libel suits, now soon to be pushed; and his undaunted spirit of a
crusader rose and lusted for the battle.
"They may lick us," he said to his paste-pot, the recipient of many a
bitter confidence and thwarted hope in the past; "but we'll show 'em
what a real newspaper is, for once. And"--his eyes sought the door
through which Hal Surtaine had passed--"I've got this much out of it,
anyway: I've helped a boy make himself a Man."
Ten thousand extra copies sped from the new and wonder-working press of
the "Clarion" that night, to be absorbed, swallowed, engulfed by a
mazed populace. In all the city there was perhaps not a man, woman, or
child who, by the following evening, had not read or heard of the
"Clarion's" exposure of the epidemic--except one. Max Veltman lay,
senseless to all this, between stupor and a fevered delirium in which
the spirit of Milly Neal called on him for delayed vengeance.