A STOP-PRESS MESSAGE
Mr. John McMurtrie, editor of the _Toronto Sphere_, a capable
journalist and a man of many friends, strolled into his office about
three o'clock one Wednesday afternoon. His first extra edition was due
at four, and it may seem that he had allowed himself a very short time
for dealing with fresh items of news that had come to hand since noon;
but he had an excellent assistant, who took a real interest in his
work, so that there was no need for the editor to hurry his luncheon
or the ensuing cigar.
"Well, Daniels," he said genially, as he entered his assistant's room.
He sat across a corner of the table, exhibiting a well-developed calf
neatly covered with golfing hose. "Is there anything fresh and frothy
on the tape?"
"Not much. A wire from 'Frisco about those flying men."
"You don't say so?"
"Here it is."
He handed the slip to his chief, who ran his eye over the message. The
words employed were few, but a journalist of McMurtrie's experience
instinctively covered the bare bones with a respectable integument,
and clothed this with a quite picturesque raiment by force of the more
ornamental parts of speech.
The substance of what he read was as follows: A cable message had
reached San Francisco from Honolulu in the afternoon of the previous
day, announcing that an aeroplane had alighted there about three
o'clock that morning, the owner, a Lieutenant Thistleton (so it was
corrupted) Smith declaring that he had come from Samoa in sixteen
hours, and was proceeding to San Francisco. He had left three hours
later, having waited only to take in a stock of petrol. On receipt of
this message the editor of every newspaper in the city had arranged
for a relay of reporters to be up all night and watch for the arrival
of this extraordinary machine. Shortly after midnight the hum of the
propellers was heard over Golden Gate, and a light in the sky
indicating the course of the aeroplane, a dozen journalists, in
motor-cars, rushed after it, but were hopelessly out-distanced. They
discovered it on the outskirts of the city. The airmen had already
landed. The reporter who was first in the race seized upon Lieutenant
Smith, and learning that he had only alighted to obtain more petrol,
rushed him back to the city in his car. His comrades and competitors,
on arriving, sought to interview the second man, whose name they had
not been able to ascertain; but he was very uncommunicative, being
occupied in cleaning the engine. Lieutenant Smith was back with petrol
in twenty minutes; in half-an-hour he was again on his way. This
extreme haste caused great disappointment to the airmen and civic
dignitaries of the city, they having risen from their beds on hearing
of his arrival to honour Lieutenant Smith with a reception. When they
reached the spot where he had descended, he had been gone some ten
minutes. In the race to meet him, one of the motor-cars collided with
an electric-light standard and was overturned, its occupant, Mr.
Aeneas T. Muckleridge, being carried to hospital in a critical
condition. Several San Francisco newspapers had published interviews
with Lieutenant Smith, one of them ten columns long.
Mr. McMurtrie chuckled as he read this dispatch in the shorthand of
the news agency.
"Bedad, 'tis worth a special editorial, Daniels. But why didn't we get
it before, man? It ought to have been in time for the morning
papers."
"You remember, sir, there's been something wrong with the line to-day
through the storm."
"So there has, indeed. Well, take out that stuff about the new British
tariff, and send Davis in to me."
He went into his room, sat back in his chair, pushed up his golfing
cap, and smiled as he meditated the periods of his editorial. In a few
moments a thin, ragged-headed youth entered with an air of haste and
terror. He carried a paper-block, which he set on his knee, looking
anxiously at the editor. Mr. McMurtrie began to dictate, the
stenographer's pencil flying over the paper as he sought to overtake
the rapid utterance of his chief. The article, as it appeared on the
second page of the _Sphere_ an hour later, ran as follows:
HOCUS POCUS
A hoax, or as our merry ancestors would have called it, a
flam, is usually the most ephemeral and evanescent of human
devices. Like a boy's soap bubble, it glitters for a brief
moment in iridescent rotundity, then ceases to be even a
film of air. It is unsubstantial as the tail of Halley's
comet. On rare occasions, it is true, its existence is
prolonged; many worthy people are beguiled; and some
enthusiasts are so effectually hoodwinked as to persist in
their delusion, and even to form societies for its
propagation. But mankind at large is sufficiently sane to
avoid a fall into this abyss of the absurd, and, having
paid its tribute of laughter, goes its way without being a
cent the worse.
San Francisco appears to be the latest victim of The Great
Aviation Hoax, and we shall watch the progressive stages of
its disillusionment with sympathetic interest, or the
development of its newest cult with sincere commiseration.
Like many other phenomena, good and bad, this gigantic
flam, it will be remembered, took its rise in the east. Its
genesis was reported in Constantinople nearly a week ago:
then at intervals we learnt that these mysterious airmen,
one of whom with artful artlessness had adopted the plain,
respectable, and specious name of Smith, had manifested
themselves at Karachi, Penang, and Port Darwin
successively. The curtain then dropped, and the world
waited with suspense for the opening of the next act,
though there were some who suspected that the performers
had slipped away with the cash-box during the interval, and
would never be heard of again. However, the curtain has at
last rung up at the golden city of the west, and it is
certainly a mark of the ingenuity of the concocters of the
hoax that they allowed at least twenty-four hours for the
passage of the Pacific. In another column we give an
account of a visit to San Francisco, in the small hours of
this morning, from which it will be seen that the city
fathers narrowly escaped making themselves ridiculous, the
flying men having wisely disappeared before the municipal
deputation, hastily summoned from their beds, had time to
make the indispensable changes in their attire. It need
scarcely be hinted that there are many accomplished
aviators in San Francisco who would take a jovial pleasure
in lending themselves to this amusing hoax, if only for the
chance of seeing their most reverend seniors in pyjamas.
A glance at the itinerary of the alleged world tourists,
coupled with a comparison of dates, will show how
impossible it is for them to have covered the stages of
their tour in the time claimed. Indeed, it is almost an
insult to our readers' intelligence even to suggest this
comparison. The record put up by Blakeney in his New
York-Chicago flight was 102 miles per hour for six
consecutive hours. If the flying men who are now asserted
to have touched at San Francisco are the same as were
reported by the Constantinople correspondent of the London
_Times_ on Friday last, a simple calculation will show that
they must have flown for many days at a time at twice
Blakeney's speed, with the briefest intervals for food and
rest. It is not yet claimed that the alleged Smith and his
anonymous companion have discovered a means of dispensing
with sleep, or that they are content, like the fabulous
chameleon, to live on air. Our children may live to witness
such developments in the science of aviation as may render
possible an aerial journey of this length and celerity; but
so sudden an augmentation of the speed and endurance of the
aeroplane, to say nothing of the more delicate mechanism of
the human frame, demands a more authentic confirmation of
the midnight impressions of the San Francisco journalists
than has yet come to hand. In short, we do not believe a
word of it, and our speculation at the moment is, what
brand of soap or tinned meat, what new machine oil, or
panacea for human ills, these ingeniously arranged
manifestations are intended to boom.
"What do you think of that, Davis?" asked Mr. McMurtrie at the end of
six minutes' rapid dictation. It was his pardonable weakness to claim
the admiration of his subordinates.
"Bully, sir," replied the shorthand-writer timidly. As a matter of
fact, he thought nothing at all, his whole attention having been so
completely absorbed by his task of making dots and curves and dashes
as to leave no portion of his brain available for receiving mental
impressions. But the editor was satisfied. Telling the youth to
transcribe his notes and send the flimsies page by page as completed
to the printer, he took up his golf sticks, passed through the outer
office, instructing his assistant to read the proof, and departed to
his recreation.
There is an excellent golf course on the Scarborough Bluffs, the
rugged, seamed, and fissured cliffs that form the northern shore of
Lake Ontario, near Toronto. Boarding a trolley-car, Mr. McMurtrie soon
reached the club-house, where he found his friend Harry Cleave
already awaiting him.
"Hullo, Mac. Day's work done?" was Mr. Cleave's salutation.
"Indeed it is. The best day's work I have done for a good while."
"Then you are pitching into somebody or something, that's certain.
What is it this time?"
"Bubbles, my boy. Those flying-men are after spinning again. Some of
the 'Frisco men will have a pain within side of 'em when they read how
I have touched 'em up. Now then, Cleave, we've got the course to
ourselves. I'm sure I can give you half a stroke and a beating. 'Tis
your honour."
The consciousness of having touched up the 'Frisco men seemed to have
a salutary influence on Mr. McMurtrie's play. He was in the top of
form, won the first two holes, and was in the act of lifting his club
to drive off from the tee of number three, when a faint buzzing sound
from the direction of the lake caused him to suspend the stroke and
glance over the placid blue water. Far away in the sky he saw a dark
speck about the size of a swallow, which, however, grew with
extraordinary rapidity, and in a few moments declared itself to be an
aeroplane containing two men.
"Be jabers!" quoth Mr. McMurtrie, resting his club on the ground and
watching the flying machine with eyes in which might have been
discerned a shade of misgiving.
It was, perhaps, thirty seconds from the time when he first caught
sight of it that the aeroplane came perpendicularly above his head,
the whirring ceased, and the machine descended with graceful swoop
upon the well-cropt turf within fifty yards of the spot where the two
golfers stood. As soon as it alighted, Mr. McMurtrie handed his sticks
to the caddie, and, as one released from a spell, hurried to meet the
man who had just stepped out of the car.
"That's Toronto over yonder?" said Smith without ceremony.
"Indeed it is," replied McMurtrie, taking stock of the dirty
dishevelled figure. "Your name's not Smith?"
"Indeed it is!"
"Holy Moses!" ejaculated McMurtrie, and, to Smith's amazement, he
turned his back and sprinted at the speed of a race-horse towards the
club-house a few hundred yards away. He rushed to the telephone box,
rang up his office, and, catching at his breath, waited with feverish
eagerness for the answer to his call.
"You there, Daniels? I'm McMurtrie. For any sake stop press, cancel
that leader, put back the tariff, votes for women, anything, only
stop it.... What!... Edition off the machine!... Don't let a copy
leave the office.... What!... First deliveries made!... Recall 'em,
or the paper's ruined. Smith's here!... No, This-something Smith ...
no, you ass, the naval lieutenant, he flying man: don't you
understand!... understand!... are you there?... Get out a special
edition at once.... Where's Davis? Bring him to the 'phone to take a
note.... That you, Davis? Take this down.... 'As we go to press we
have the best of evidence for the statement that the marvellous
world-flight of that intrepid young airman, Lieutenant Thistledown
Smith, of the British Navy, is a sober fact, and not, as our sceptical
wiseacres have asserted, an ingeniously concocted hoax. Lieutenant
Smith descended at 3:50 this afternoon on the Scarborough Bluffs,
having accomplished the enormous distance from San Francisco without a
stop, in the marvellous time of twelve hours, twenty-one minutes, and
fourteen seconds. In our final edition, which will be accelerated, we
shall publish an interview with Lieutenant Smith, with exclusive
particulars of his remarkable voyage and his romantic career."
"I'm not so sure of that," said Smith dryly. He had entered with Mr.
Cleave, and heard the frenzied editor's concluding sentences. "To
begin with, I stopped at St. Paul, and was lucky enough to escape
without attracting any attention. I shouldn't have been here but for
the storm."
"For goodness' sake, Lieutenant, don't tell anybody that. A little
stop at St. Paul isn't worth making a fuss about. You'll come along
into the city with me, and we will get a few of the boys together and
give you a topping dinner."
"I'd rather be hanged," said Smith. "The fact is, I only came down to
get enough petrol on board to take me across the Atlantic. You can
tell me where to get what I want?"
"Indeed I can. I tell you what. I'll 'phone for the petrol--how much
do you want?--and get it out here in no time. You won't mind me
ringing up a few particular friends, and inviting them out to see
you?"
"Please don't do anything of the kind. I'm very tired; I'm not
presentable; and I've no time to spare."
"Sure you wouldn't be after declining to answer a question or two--to
be worked up into an interview, you know?"
"Really, I've nothing to tell. You appear to know a good deal about me
already, and I'm sure your imagination can supply the rest."
"But there's a gap, lieutenant. We can't account for you between Port
Darwin and Honolulu."
"We're wasting time," said Smith despairingly. "Be so good as to order
up the petrol; then I'll give you a few headings."
McMurtrie was delighted. He gave the order to a firm in the city,
requesting that the petrol should be sent out by motor at once. Then
he took Smith and Cleave into the luncheon-room, which they had to
themselves, ordered a meal for Smith, and drinks for Cleave and
himself, and while Smith was eating, filled his note-book with
jottings, which he foretold would sell out two editions of his paper
like winking.
Rodier, meanwhile, was cleaning the engine.
To execute an order smartly is one of the first of business virtues.
Smith was satisfied that the virtue was appreciated in Toronto: the
petrol arrived, as McMurtrie assured him, in the shortest possible
time. Unluckily the Toronto men of business had their share of
humanity's common failing--if it is a failing--curiosity. McMurtrie,
with Smith at his elbow, had scrupulously refrained from explaining
what the petrol was wanted for; his assistant, Daniels, had been too
busy seeing the special edition to press to run about gossiping; and
Davis, the shorthand-writer, the third in the secret, had become so
mechanical that nothing stirred emotion within him; he wrote of
murders, assassinations, political convulsions, Rooseveltian exploits,
diplomatic indiscretions, everything but football matches, with the
same pencil and the same cold, inhuman precision. But it happened that
one of the compositors in the _Sphere_ printing office, who took a
lively interest in the affairs of his fellow mortals, had a bet with a
friend in the plumbing line about this very matter of the mysterious
flying men. No sooner had he set up his portion of the editor's note
than he begged leave of absence for half-an-hour from the overseer,
whipped off his apron, and rushed off to demand his winnings before
the loser had time to spend them in the _Blue Lion_ on the way home
from work. They repaired, nevertheless, to the _Blue Lion_ to settle
their account; they told the news to the barman, who passed it to the
landlord; a publisher's clerk heard it, and repeated it to the
manager; the manager acquainted the head of the firm as he went out to
tea; the publisher mentioned it in an off-hand way to the man next him
at the café; and--to roll the snowball no further--half Toronto was in
possession of the news before the _Sphere_ appeared on the streets.
The result was a general exodus in the direction of the Scarborough
Bluffs. On foot, on bicycles, in cabs, motor-cars, trolley-cars,
drays, and all kinds of vehicles, every one who had a tincture of
sporting spirit set off to see two men and a structure of metal and
canvas--quite ordinary persons and things, but representing a Deed and
an Idea.
Thus it happened that close behind the dray conveying the petrol came
a long procession, the sound of whose coming announced it from afar.
"'Tis the way of us in Toronto," said McMurtrie soothingly, when Smith
vented his annoyance.
The crowd invaded the club-grounds, to the horror of the
green-keepers, and rolled past the club-house to the aeroplane, where
Rodier, having finished cleaning, was regaling himself with an
excellent repast sent out to him by Mr. McMurtrie. Cheers for
Lieutenant Smith arose; Rodier smiled and bowed, not ceasing to ply
his knife and fork until a daring youth put his foot upon the
aeroplane. Then Rodier dropped knife and fork, and rushed like a cat
at the intruder. The Frenchiness of his language apprised the
spectators that they were on the wrong scent, and they demanded to
know where Lieutenant Smith was. Knowing Smith's dislike of
demonstrations, Rodier was about to point lugubriously to the edge of
the cliff, when some one shouted "Here he is!" and the mob flocked
towards the club-house, from which Smith had just emerged. Rodier
seized the opportunity to finish his meal, and direct the operations
of the men who had brought the petrol.
Smith had not found himself in so large a crowd of English-speaking
people since he had left London. The early morning enthusiasm of the
San Francisco journalists was hard to bear, but the afternoon
enthusiasm of Toronto was terrible. Hundreds of young fellows wanted
to hoist him to their shoulders; dozens of opulent citizens perspired
to carry him to the city in their cars; some very young ladies panted
to kiss him; and a score of journalists buzzed about him, but upon
them McMurtrie smiled with a look of conscious superiority. Smith
whispered to him. The editor nodded.
"Gentlemen!" he shouted, holding up his hand.
"Silence!... Hear, hear!... S-s-sh!... Don't make such a row!...
Same to you!... Let's hear what Jack McMurtrie has got to say."
Thus the babel was roared down.
"Ladies and gentlemen," said McMurtrie; "Mr. Smith--"
"Three cheers for Smith!" shouted some one; horns blurted; from the
edge of the crowd the first notes of "For he's a jolly good fellow"
were heard, and they sang it through twice, so that those who had
missed the beginning should not be hurt in their feelings.
"Ladies and gentlemen," began McMurtrie again, when he could make his
voice heard, "Mr. Smith, who is rather hoarse from constant exposure
to the night air, asks me to thank you for the warmth of your
reception. He has been good enough to give me full particulars of his
wonderful journey, which you will find in the final edition of the
_Sphere_. As I've no doubt at all that you are anxious to have the
chance of seeing Mr. Smith performing the evolutions which up to this
time have been witnessed by next to nobody but the stars and the
flying fishes, he has consented, at my request, to give a
demonstration, provided that you'll allow him a clear run, and don't
be accessory to your own manslaughter."
This announcement was greeted with loud cheers. The crowd fell back,
allowing Smith a free course to the aeroplane.
"Bedad," said McMurtrie; "I wouldn't wonder but they tear me to pieces
before I get safe home. But I'll skip into a motor-car as soon as you
are started. Now, is there anything I can do for you before you go?"
"Only send two cables for me; one to my sister: here's the address;
say simply 'All well.' The other to Barracombe, 532 Mincing Lane,
London, asking him to meet me at home at eleven p.m., to-morrow. You
won't forget?"
"I will not. But you're a cool hand, to be sure."
A space was cleared; the aeroplane ran off, soared aloft, and for a
few seconds circled over the heads of the spectators. Then a voice
came to them from the air, not so much like Longfellow's falling star
as an emission from a gramaphone.
"Good-bye, friends. Thanks for your kind reception. Sorry I can't stay
any longer; but I've got to be in Portsmouth, England within
twenty-four hours. Good-bye."
The aeroplane wheeled eastward, and shot forward at a speed that made
the onlookers gasp. When it had disappeared, they became suddenly
alive to the suspicion that Jack McMurtrie had practised a ruse on
them. They gave a yell and looked round for him. A motor-car was
making at forty miles an hour for Toronto.