In a newspaper office, where one impression so quickly and
inevitably obliterates another, sensation is startling only in
the fact of its ephemerality. For two busy hours wave after wave
of the world's turbulence had beaten on the shoreline of the
Advance staff's attention. Every one knew, from Pyott down, that
the day was a "big" one. And since it is seldom the ever-arriving
guests of sensation which disturb a newspaper office but rather
the secondary thought of bestowing them in their right chamber
and bed and fitting them with their right "heading" night-caps,
the ordeal of the Advance's day had reached its second and most
exacting crisis. So when Pyott, the managing editor, was called
up on the wire by Obed Tyrer, the President of the First National
Trust, the call from that quarter carried with it no responsive
curiosity.
"Can you come up here right away?" demanded the banker, in a
voice of that coerced tranquillity into which the trained mind
translates itself when face to face with undue excitement.
"No; I can't! "
"Why can't you?"
"Well, among other things, I've got the trifling matter of a
paper to put to press. What's wrong?"
"You know what's wrong!"
"Do I?"
"And you and your men let this go through, two whole weeks of it,
for the sake of your little yellow-journal scarehead!"
"Look here, Tyrer, I'm a busy man. Tell me what you're talking
about, or ring off."
"I'm talking about the lunacy of a one-cent journalist who's
willing to risk even his own funds for the sake of an afternoon
beat! I tell you, Pyott, the whole story's got to be stopped!"
"What story?"
"The Advance story! I've got your man Trotter here now. He----"
"Ah, Trotter!" exclaimed Pyott. He was at last beginning to see
light.
"I've got him and your job-room man named Tiernan up here, but I
can't do anything with Trotter. He's mad, mad as a March hare.
Says he's got to get his story down to you for to-day's issue."
"So you've got Trotter there! What else have you got?"
"Will you hold things up till I run down and talk it over? Will
you promise me that much?"