He looked up into the whimsically comic face of Charlie Murray, famous
in film farces--with funny features and gruff ways, but a heart as soft
as a mother's. With no idea to whom he was speaking, John Gallant
blurted:
"Please, not now--I can't."
"Just a word with you, son; come along, let's get back to your dressing
room," said the other without taking his arm from his shoulder.
As they left the arena they heard the gong sound for the opening round
of another bout. It brought back to John the bitterness of his loss in
defeat and his chagrin. He had made a mess of things. How could he go
back to his mother with his face battered and swollen and without the
$200 he had expected to take to her to pay for his father's funeral?
He flung himself on a bench in his dressing room and buried his face in
his hands. He sat for a time until he had choked back his hysterical
crying and when he looked up he saw the stranger who had stopped him in
the aisle gazing at him intently. He saw something in the mild blue eyes
of this man that overcame the momentary feeling of shame he felt for
having given way to his bitterness and despair.
"What's your trouble, son?" the stranger asked.
He sat silent.
"Out with it, son, something's wrong somewhere and I may be able to help
you."
"Who are you?" John asked.
"I'm Charlie Murray--if that means anything to you. And, believe me,
son, I know that something beside the licking you got out there is
worrying you. That's why I followed you here. Let's have it; come on,
tell me what's wrong. It'll make you feel better."
Before he really knew it, John was telling him his story.
"That's the reason I made a fool of myself," he said. "I couldn't help
crying like that. I guess I was too far gone. I don't know what to do
now. It will break my mother's heart when she sees me in this condition.
It would have helped if I could have handed her enough to pay the
funeral expenses.
"I don't know why I've told you all this. Making more of a fool of
myself, I suppose."
Murray listened to it all, silently. Then he rose and went to the door.
"Oh, Murphy," he called, putting his head out the dressing room door.
The youth with the twisted nose whom John remembered as his second
answered Murray's call.
"Fix this boy up, Murphy," said Murray. "Patch up his face the best you
can and keep him here until I get back. Understand, keep him here until
I get back. Don't let him out of your sight."
"I heardja, boss, I heardja," said Murphy.
And Murray hurried out, leaving John wondering, in Murphy's hands.
* * * * *
It was just before the main event that Murray came down the aisle and
climbed into the ring, brushing the referee announcer, seconds and
others into the corners. He stood in the center of the ring and held up
his hand for silence. The crowd quieted.
"What is it, Charlie?" someone shouted.
"It's this, boys," he said. "I've just had a talk with the Gallant kid,
who was knocked kicking a few minutes ago by Battling Rodriguez. You saw
the fight he put up and you know it's only a good, game kid that can
fight like that.
"I don't know how many of you saw it, but the Gallant kid--that's his
real name, John Gallant--was crying when he went out of this ring and he
wasn't bawling because he got licked, either.
"I'll tell you what he told me back there in the dressing rooms. Do you
know why he was here fighting, tonight? He was here to get enough money
to pay for his father's funeral. He had to have the money given to the
winner and he lost. He didn't tell his poor little mother he was coming
out here. He wanted to surprise her.
"Now, boys, the only surprise he'll take home to her is a battered face
unless you want to surprise him with--"
A silver dollar spun through the smoke-filled air and hit the canvas at
Murray's feet. That started it. For a full two minutes the air was thick
with flying coins. They clinked and rolled around in the ring. Bills
weighted with coins caromed along the canvas floor.
Murray and a few others collected the money and counted it, standing in
the ring.
"Is it enough?" asked a voice from the crowd.
Murray looked up with a broad smile. His hat, held in his hands, was
brimming with the money picked from the floor of the ring.
"Five hundred and fifty-six dollars and sixty cents," he said.
"Where's the kid?" someone demanded.
"That's the idea, show us the kid," shouted the crowd.
* * * * *
When John was brought back into the ring, embarrassed, awkward, trying
to smile through his swollen lips, the "house" was quiet. Murphy pushed
him to the center, where Murray was waiting for him.
"That's for you, Mr. Gallant, with the compliments of the boys out here
who know a good, game kid when they see one and whose hearts are always
in the right place," he said, handing him the hat full of money.
He felt the tears coming back in his eyes.
"I don't--I can't----" he said hoarsely.
"Oh, yes, you can," interrupted Murray. "You take it and forget about
it."
The crowd cheered. A thick-shouldered individual pushed himself through
the ropes into the ring.
"For the keed, Meester Murray," said the newcomer, handing him a $20
bill. "Hee's a gude keed, maybe I help."
It was Battling Rodriguez. He crossed over and taking John's hand
grinned out at the crowd.
John felt the tears coming again and was thankful when Murray led him to
a corner and helped him down out of the ring.
"One of the newspaper men wants to speak to you," he said. "Here's your
man, Morton."
He shook hands with the newspaper man.
"You're not a fighter by profession, though you're game enough to be a
champion. How are you fixed for a job?" asked Morton.
"I need one," John replied.
"Tell you what you do, then," said the other, who seemed to take John's
answer for granted. "You come down and see me tomorrow and I'll see if I
can't find something for you to do. How would you like to get into
newspaper work?"
How would he like it? John felt that nothing in the world would he like
better.
"Tomorrow, then, ask for me," said Morton, turning to watch the two
boxers who entered the ring to fight the main event.
As he went up the aisle men reached out and shook hands with him. Some
of them dropped money into the hat brimming with bills and coins that he
still held in his hand. He filled his pockets with the money and handed
the hat to Murphy to be returned to that prince of men, Charlie Murray.
* * * * *
With the money given him by the crowd, the $20 bill Battling Rodriguez
added to it and the $50 he received as the loser's end of the purse in
his bout, he had more than $625 as he boarded the car from Vernon to the
city to return home. His happiness was dimmed, however, by the thought
of facing his mother, who, he knew, would be waiting up for him.
When he transferred at Seventh and Spring streets and boarded another
car a woman gasped at the sight of his face. Murphy had used every trick
known to a professional second to doctor his battered features, but
nothing could hide the swollen lips, the cut over his eye and the eye
that was puffed so that there was only a thin slit between the lids to
see through.
He decided that it would be easier upon his mother for him to tell her
everything. Then it would be over and done with. She would not worry
then as she would if he told her some impossible story.
She was in her chair in the living room when he returned home. He threw
himself at her feet.
"Mother," he said, "please."
"My boy," she said, waiting for him to lift his face from her lap.
He felt he could not raise his head. They sat silent for a while and
then she put her hands on each side of his head and lifted his face to
hers. He shut his eyes. He could not stand to see her look as she saw
his condition.
He waited, his battered face upturned. It seemed hours that she held his
face, without a word. Then she leaned forward and her lips touched his
forehead gently in a kiss.
"My boy," she said and her arms went around his neck.
They rose at last and she bathed his wounds, smiling through her tears.
When he kissed her goodnight she whispered again, "My boy." He knew he
was forgiven and he went to his room thinking of the adventure waiting
for him in the morning when he would meet Morton and begin work in a
newspaper office.
* * * * *
He was bewildered when he entered the editorial department of the
afternoon newspaper of which Morton was sporting editor. Never had he
seen such a busy place.
Telegraph instruments and typewriters clicked and clattered incessantly.
Although it was broad day outside, electric lights burned brightly over
desks. The floor was covered with discarded newspapers and scraps and
balls of copy paper.
Men and boys hurried from desk to desk, back and forth, in and out of
swinging doors. As he watched them, wondering if they really knew what
they were doing themselves, they reminded him of ants around an ant
hill. He was thrilled by the life and energy of the place, the speed and
earnestness of the workers.
At a flat-topped desk over which was a sign with the words "City Editor"
sat a fat, bald-headed man wearing a green eye-shade, who spoke over
his shoulder to a younger man at another desk close to his. This younger
man wore a telephone headgear, receivers over both ears, and punched at
the typewriter before him with the first finger of each hand. John saw
he was writing what someone was dictating to him over the telephone.
"T, like in Thomas; I like in Isaac; P like in Peter," the man with the
headgear shouted into the mouthpiece of an extension close to his face.
John tried to fathom what the man with the headgear was talking about
and it finally dawned on him that he was making certain of the spelling
of the word "tip," dictated to him, by repeating the letters as they
appeared in other words.
He caught sight of Morton at a desk on the far side of the big,
high-ceilinged room and crossed over, weaving his way through a
labyrinth of desks, chairs and tables. Morton, who had been glancing
over a newspaper, looked up as he approached.
"Well, if it isn't the Gallant kid!" he exclaimed. "I'd almost forgotten
all about you. Sit down."
John sat down while Morton questioned him. No, he had never done any
writing except a little for his school paper. Yes, he'd like to start
in as a reporter. It didn't make much difference how much he was paid as
long as he could get started.
"All right, then," said Morton, rising. "We'll go over and see P. Q.,
but don't you ever blame him for getting you started in this game."
The sporting editor led him to the fat, bald-headed man with the green
eye-shade.
"P. Q.," he said.
The city editor looked up.
"Here's the young fellow I was telling you about this morning; name's
John Gallant."
"P. Q."--John afterward learned that those were his initials, uniquely
symbolical of his perpetual order to reporters to be "pretty quick" in
their work--looked at the marks on John's face left by the fists of
Battling Rodriguez.
"Fighting face, all right," he said. "Well, suppose you go to work."
He reached back to his desk and brought up a handful of clippings from a
newspaper from which he selected a few short ones.
"Grab a typewriter and rewrite these," he said, handing the clippings to
John. "Keep 'em short. Twenty-five words each. Remember that always.
Keep everything short. Keep your eyes and ears open and read the papers.
Read everything in them. Now get over there and start writing and I'll
call you when I need you."
John knew that as long as he lived he would never forget that first day
in newspaper work. He rewrote the clippings carefully, counting the
words to make certain that they did not exceed the twenty-five ordered
by P. Q. He had done some typewriting at school and practiced more by
filling page after page of copy paper with the old favorite beginner's
sentence, "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the
party," and its twin, "The quick, brown fox jumped over the lazy dog."
He watched in open-mouthed wonder at the speed with which the other
reporters--he counted himself one of them--wrote their stories. He
learned that everything written for a newspaper is a "story," everything
from a three-line item about a meeting of the Colorado State society to
a banner-line murder.
He was fascinated by a reporter whom P. Q. called Brennan and who worked
at a typewriter close to where he was sitting. Brennan, thin-faced,
about thirty, John judged, turned out page after page of typewritten
copy, stopping at the completion of each page to throw back his head and
shout: "Boy! Oh, BOY!" at the ceiling. In response to this call a copy
boy appeared and carried the page to P. Q. As he worked he smoked
cigarettes, lighting each fresh one from the stub of the one that
preceded it. These cigarettes he carefully stood on end on the desk as
his fingers pounded at the typewriter.
When he took a deep inhalation of tobacco smoke during his writing
Brennan paused and gazed, dreamy-eyed, out into space. Then suddenly, he
stood his cigarette on end again and attacked the typewriter keys
furiously. John noticed that Brennan, like the man with the headgear,
used only one finger of each hand in typewriting.
Along in the afternoon, when he had stopped hammering at his machine, he
turned to find John staring at him. Stretching out his arms, yawning, he
asked:
"New man?"
John said he was.
"First time?"
John said it was.
From Brennan, John learned many things. He learned that P. Q. had an
unswerving prejudice against reporters who used the touch system in
typewriting.
"He says they use a typewriter like it was a piano and get into the
habit of not looking at what they are writing," Brennan explained. "He
says the touch system has ruined more reporters than shorthand."
"Why shorthand?" asked John. "I thought----"
"I know, you thought every good reporter should write shorthand," said
Brennan. "Well, that's one thing P. Q. and I agree on. I've seen a lot
of them in my time and I've never seen a reporter who wrote shorthand
who was a real star man. Writing shorthand kills your imagination. All
you write is what other people tell you and exactly as they said it.
Somehow, a shorthand man doesn't get pep into his stuff, take it from
me."
John thought he understood.
"You work hard and long in this game and it makes an old man of you
before your time," Brennan continued. "But it's a great game. Once it
gets into your blood you're a newspaper man for life.
"Generally speaking, there are two kinds of reporters. One is the kind
with a nose for news and without any particular ability to write. The
other is the kind that can write without being able to get the news for
themselves. When you get the two in one, a man who can write and get the
news himself, you've got a star, but they are few and far between.
"P. Q. says once in a while that I can write and I think I'm a demon
news-getter and there you are--that's me.
"Let me tell you how it is about writing a story. Suppose Mary Jones,
aged 18, of 1559 Fifty-Ump street, shop girl, kills herself and leaves a
note saying she did it because the man she loved threw her over. It's no
story to write it that 'Mary Jones, 18 years old, a shop girl, who
resided at 1559 Fifty-Ump street, ended her life today because of an
unhappy affair with an unnamed man.'
"Plain 'Mary Jones' isn't the story. Probably only fifty people in the
city know her. What do the others care? Not much. This is your
story--'An 18-year-old girl who dreamed of a Prince Charming to come and
carry her away from a monotonous life behind a store counter and a
dreary third-floor-back room, took her life in Los Angeles today.'
"Get the idea? 'Mary Jones' isn't the story. What she did, how she
lived, what made her do it, that's what the story is. That brings a
throb of sympathy, a tear perhaps, for her from someone who never heard
of her and it helps to make better folks and a better world."
Brennan's way of talking entranced John. He realized there was more in
reporting than he had ever imagined. P. Q. seemed to have forgotten him
completely during the next few days. In the mornings he was given a few
short clippings to rewrite and that was all.
"Don't worry, he's got an eye on you," Brennan told him. "And let me
tell you something. Perhaps you've read stories about the cub reporter
scooping the town, landing the big exclusive story and all that. Well,
that's bunk. No cub reporter ever did it, not unless he was working
against a bunch of other cubs. Why, he's lucky if he knows what to do
with a big story when he's got one, let alone put it over on the star
men of the other sheets."
A really first-class newspaper man, Brennan told him, was born and not
made.
"You can make them up to a certain point, but no further," he said. "And
take it from me, the ones that are born newspaper men aren't born every
minute for Mr. Barnum or anyone else to get."
It was at noon of the third day he had been at work when John was given
his first assignment. He saw P. Q. rise from his chair and look over the
reporters at their desks and he heard him call his name.
"Here, Gallant, I want you to do something," the city editor said. "Lawn
fete--charity stuff--out at palatial home of the Barton Randolphs.
Society affair. Must have representative there. No story. Society editor
takes care of that. Just get list of names and how much money they take
in. Here's admission card. Beat it."
John was disappointed. He had hoped for something with a touch of
adventure. Not until he left the office did he fully realize where he
was going. Society lawn fete! He looked down at his well worn suit and
remembered the patch on his trousers beneath his coat tail.