Trotter, shut in the Vice-President's private office, paid little
attention to his surroundings. He did not even know that the desk
on which he wrote was of mahogany. He did not notice the imported
Daghestan under his feet. He was unconscious of the orchids in
the low desk-vase of French silver. He was oblivious of the onyx
and marble elegance that surrounded him.
All he knew was that he had paper and ink in plenty and the
Greatest Story of the Age to write. All he knew was that time was
precious, that two trusted messengers stood before him to deliver
his copy, that presses in the lower part of the city waited like
hungry animals to gulp down his story, and that before nightfall
a million eyes would widen and half a million hearts would beat a
little faster at the words that he was about to write.
He pushed back the silver and cut-glass desk ornaments, the heavy
gold-framed portrait of a young girl standing beside an
opulent-bosomed woman in an opera cloak, the foolish vase of
orchids. He made space for himself and his work. And then he
wrote.
He wrote with all the rhapsodic passion of a god creating a new
world. He began with a preamble that would have broken a
copy-reader's heart. He followed it up with atmospheric
discursiveness that would have worn away an editor's blue pencil.
He told how Steam and Steel were supposed to have crushed the
Spirit of Romance out of the age. He pointed out how the modern
city of stone and concrete seemed no longer to house that wayward
and retrospective spirit in which the heart of the poet has
forever reveled.
Then he sought to demonstrate how true Romance can never die, how
Wonder is all about even the Wall Street clerk and the
five-o'clock commuter. He put forward the claim that modern New
York was as potentially picturesque, as alluringly labyrinthine,
as olden Bagdad itself. He argued that the Thousand and One Tales
were nightly recurring in our very midst, only we had neither the
eyes nor the leisure to observe them. He told of the strange
underworlds hidden from the casual eye, of subterranean rivers of
life which Respectability never sees. He showed how it was only
the face of life that had changed. He intimated that Stevenson
had unearthed romance enough in an up-to-date London, that Hugo
and Balzac had found it in Paris, and he eloquently proclaimed
that even to-day it was to be stumbled across in our city of
homes on the Hudson.
It was a very rhythmical piece of fine writing, and he had his
coat off and was working in his shirt sleeves before he had
advanced six pages into it. Then he veered about to the story
itself. He enlarged on the amount of wealth harbored by a
national bank. He explained how this vast wealth was hoarded and
protected, the massive walls, the steel vaults, the steam flood
pipes, the ever-watching attendants, the tangle of articulate
wires that a touch would make garrulous, the time locks, the
floors of cement and railway iron, the contact mats which
reported the slightest footfall of the trespasser.
Then he told how an idea had come to the mind of an idle yegg
named "Missouri" Horton. He told how this wary and cunning and
romantic-spirited outlaw had planned his attack, how he had hired
the cellar next to the granite-walled citadel of opulence, how he
had learned the location of the vaults, how he had figured out
the thickness of the masonry, how he had slowly and quietly
prepared for his lonely and Promethean attack.
Trotter's sallow young face grew chalkier as he wrote, though he
was unconscious of either effort or weariness. They brought him
luncheon, in due time, on a napkin-covered tray. He lifted the
napkin peevishly, took a disdainful look at the food, gulped down
a cup of black coffee, and pushed the mess away from him. He had
serious work in hand.
He wrote on, unconscious of time. His mind seemed to sway,
hypnotically, with the reverberations of his own rhetoric. He
tossed in a classical allusion or two; here and there he left an
Old Testament phrase to coruscate along the fringe of his text;
he even called back one of his copy carriers, to revise an
unelaborated figure of speech.
Then he told how the tunnel was begun, how brick by brick and
stone by stone a passage was grubbed through every obstacle. He
expatiated on the infinite patience of such a man as Horton, how
Monte Cristo paled beside him, how vast difficulties had to be
overcome, how every stone had to be stowed carefully away in the
back of the cellar, how in time the mortar and cement had to be
ground to a powder and carried secretly away. He told how the
tunnel was pushed forward, foot by foot; how the bank was
attacked in its one and only vital spot, precisely as a porcupine
curled defensively up in the snow is seized by the fisher-marten,
not through open attack, but by artfully tunneling up under the
quill-less belly.
Then he retailed how the vast business of this great banking
institution went tranquilly and ponderously on, how millions were
handled and changed and stowed away while all the time the
unknown enemy was inch by inch crawling nearer.
When a note came up from the Advance office signed by the
managing editor--the managing editor who had never been known to
praise one of his men in all his twelve-year regime--Trotter took
it as a matter of course. "Your story is great," this note had
read. "Keep it up." Trotter merely gave the scrawl a second
hurried glance. It did not excite him; it did not intoxicate. He
was already drunk with the wine of creation, as delirious as a
whirling dervish. And he knew he still had work to do.
A white-whiskered gentleman wearing a pearl-buttoned white
waistcoat stepped quietly up to the office door and peered
guardedly in over his glasses. Then he tip-toed away unseen, with
a condoning smile on his astute and thin-nosed old face. Trotter
had no thought or memory of his surroundings. It was his Story;
the Story of his life. He sat there, entangled and locked
together with it, unconscious of what it was doing to him,
oblivious of how, like a blood-sucking vampire, it was draining
the vigor of his youth from him.
He was now in the very vortex of his story. He told how he had
posted Tiernan at the head of the steps leading down into the
plumber's shop. He cunningly enlarged on the huge Irishman's
bewilderment, his incredulity, his blasphemously reiterated
demand to know what it was all about. He told how he himself had
silently entered the shop, how he had crept through to the second
door, how he had waited for a moment to take out his revolver. He
described the hot and reeking air of the tunnel as he crept into
its mouth. He pictured the sudden glare of light at the shaft end
where Horton stood burning away an outer vault wall with an
electrode. He told how the heat and the fumes of that little
underground hell bewildered him, how he stood gaping at the
scene, watching the white-hot tongue of fire hissing and licking
at its last barrier of steel. He did not neglect to paint how the
hardened metal, under the electrolyzing current eroding its
surface, became as chalk, decomposing into a charry mass which
one blow of a hammer might penetrate.
He told how he crept up on the man, step by step, with his
revolver in his hand. He told how he could see the safe-breaker's
face shining with sweat, how he could smell scorching clothing,
how his eyes began to ache with the light-glare until he threw up
a forearm to protect them. He explained how it had been his
intention to creep up on the criminal and seize him bodily, and
how he was defeated in this by a sudden and unlooked-for movement
on the part of his unsuspecting enemy.
Horton had quickly swung about--he was, in fact, groping along
the passage floor for a two-quart tin pail partly filled with tap
water. The glare had blinded him, for the time being, and he was
in reality feeling for a drink. But the Advance reporter had
thought the movement meant that his presence was discovered. And
the two men had come together.
Trotter told of the fight there, hand to hand, in the choking
tunnel with its tangle of deadly currents. He recounted how the
other man's strength had been greater than his own, how he felt
his breath going, how he saw himself being forced closer and
closer back on the glaring electrode. He confessed that he had
been excited and foolish enough to lose the revolver. He
mentioned his indignation when he saw that the other man was
actually trying to use his teeth. He described how for the first
time it came home to him that he would be killed there, that
Tiernan could not possibly hear his cries, that his heart could
not possibly continue to beat without fresh air.
Then he had grown desperate. He had apparently gone mad. He had
started to use his own teeth. He had set his jaw on the yeggman's
hand as it groped for his throat. He had caught the index finger
of the other blackened hand and levered it savagely backward,
backward until the bone broke and it hung limp on the tortured
tendon. He had sent the relaxed head skidding against the tunnel
wall, once, twice, three times, until the sweat-stained arms fell
away and left him free.
He had sat there for many minutes, stupidly staring at the
unconscious man. Then he had found the revolver at his feet, and,
being too weak to get up he had still sat there, contentedly
firing a volley of bullets against the steel vault wall until the
bank officials were alarmed and an armed guard was sent scurrying
about to investigate. And with the timely arrival of Tiernan and
that armed guard came an end to the most audacious and staggering
criminal coup of the century!
It was all very beautiful, the very finest of fine writing.
Trotter poured his ardent and exultant young soul into it. And
when his last page had been written and sent away, he sat back in
the wide-armed, morocco-upholstered bank-room chair, white with
weariness, the fires of creation burnt out to the last ember.
But one thing sustained and consoled him. He knew, as he whisked
down to the Advance office in the Vice-President's French touring
car, that his work was done. He also knew that it was well done.
It did not even startle him when Pyott himself held out a
cold-fingered hand.
"Good business!" was his chief's sardonic commendation.
"Then I've made good?" asked the weary youth, without enthusiasm.
"You've made your TEN-STRIKE!" was the answer. "You're on the
city staff at twenty dollars a week."
"When do I have to go over my proofs?" asked the tired-eyed and
innocent youth.
"What proofs?"
"My story proofs!"
Pyott forced his eyes to meet those of the pale-faced boy looking
up at him. The managing editor did so without an outward flinch.
He was more or less used to such things.
"You've made good, my boy!" He casually turned away before he
spoke the next sentence. "BUT WE'VE HAD TO KILL THAT STORY OF
YOURS!"
Trotter did not move. He did not even gulp. He merely closed his
tired eyes and at the same time let his lower lip fall a trifle
away from the upper, as his breath came brokenly between them.
Then he sat down. For they had done more than kill his story.
They had killed the spirit of Youth in him. There would be other
battles, he knew, and perhaps other victories--but never again
that fine, careless rapture of Youth! For they had killed his
firstborn!
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Vol. XXIII December 1910 No. 6