"Not yet, nor soon." The editor smiled broadly, and Paul realized that
the humor in those pin-point eyes was rather cruel.
Five other calls he made that day, to be greeted gruffly in every
instance except one. One man encouraged him slightly by saying:
"Come back next week; I may have an opening then."
In view of the "pay-as-you-enter" policy in vogue at Anderson's
boarding-house he knew there could be no next week for him, therefore
he inquired:
"How about a little space work in the meantime? I'm pretty good at
that stuff."
"You are?"
"Surest thing you know."
"Did you ever do any?"
"No. But I'm good, just the same."
"Huh!" the editor grunted. "There's no room now, and, come to think of
it, you needn't bother to get around next week. I can't break in new
men."
That evening young Anderson again repaired to his room with his
harvest of daily papers, and again he read them thoroughly. He was by
no means discouraged as yet, for his week had just begun--there
were still five days of grace, and prime ministers have been made
overnight, nations have fallen in five days. Six calls a day for five
days, that meant thirty chances for a job. It was a cinch!
Hidden away among the back pages once more he encountered the
golden-haired-girl story, and although one paper featured it a bit
because of some imaginary clue, the others treated it casually, making
public the information that the body still lay at the Morgue, a
silent, irritating thing of mystery.
On the third day Paul made his usual round of calls. He made them more
quickly now because he was recognized, and was practically thrown out
of each editorial sanctum. His serenity remained unruffled, and
his confidence undisturbed. Of all the six editors, Burns, of _The
Intelligencer_, treated him worst, adding ridicule to his gruffness, a
refinement of cruelty which annoyed the young steamboat man. Anderson
clenched his hard-knuckled hand and estimated the distance from
editorial ear to point of literary chin, but realized in time that
steamboat methods were out of place here in the politer realms of
journalism.
Four times more he followed his daily routine, and on Monday morning
arose early to avoid his landlady. His week was up, his nickels and
dimes were gone, nevertheless he spent the day on his customary
rounds. He crept in late at night, blue with the cold and rather dazed
at his bad luck; he had eaten nothing since the morning before, and
he knew that he dared not show up at the breakfast-table the next
morning. For the time being discouragement settled upon him; it
settled suddenly like some heavy smothering thing; it robbed him of
hope and redoubled his hunger. He awoke at daylight, roused by the
sense of his defeat, then tiptoed out while yet the landlady was abed,
and spent the day looking for work along the water-front. But winter
had tied up the shipping, and he failed, as he likewise failed at
sundry employment agencies where he offered himself in any capacity.
At noon he wandered into the park, and, finding a sheltered spot,
sunned himself as best he could. He picked up the sheets of a
wind-scattered paper and read until the chill December afternoon
got into his bones and forced him to his feet. The tale of the
unidentified girl at the Morgue recurred to him when he read the
announcement that she would be buried two days later in the Potter's
Field. Perhaps the girl had starved for lack of work, he reflected.
Perhaps hunger and cold had driven her to her death. Certainly those
two were to blame for many a tragedy calculated to mystify warmly clad
policemen and well-fed reporters.
When he stole, shivering, into his bleak bedroom, late that night, he
found a note pinned upon his pillow. Of course the landlady needed her
rent--all landladies were in need of money--and of course he would get
out in the morning. He was glad she had not turned him out during the
day, for this afforded him sanctuary for another night at least. After
to-morrow it would be a park bench for his.
He left his valise behind in the morning, rather lamenting the fact
that the old lady could not wear the shirts it contained, and hoping
that she would realize a sufficient sum from their sale to pay his
bill.
It was late afternoon when he commenced his listless tramp toward the
newspaper offices. Since Burns had become his pet aversion, he saved
him for the last, framing a few farewell remarks befitting the death
of hopes like his, and rehearsing an exit speech suitable to mark his
departure from the field of letters.
When he finally reached _The Intelligencer_ editorial-rooms, Burns
rounded on him angrily.
"For the love of Mike! Are you here again?" he demanded.
"I thought you might like to have some space work--"
"By heavens! You're persistent."
"Yes."
"We editors are an unfeeling lot, aren't we?" the fat young man
inquired. "No temperament, no appreciation." He laughed noiselessly.
"Give me a job," Anderson cried, his voice breaking huskily. "I'll
make good. I'll do anything."
"How long do you intend to keep bothering me?" questioned Burns.
Anderson's cheeks were blue and the backs of his legs were trembling
from weakness, but he repeated, stolidly: "Give me a job. I--I won't
bother you after that. I'll make good, see if I don't."
"You think well of yourself, don't you?"
"If you thought half as well of me as I do," Paul assured him, "I'd be
your star reporter."
"Star hell!" testily cried the editor. "We haven't got such a thing.
They don't know they're alive, except on pay-day. Look at this blond
girl at the Morgue--they've wasted two weeks on that case." He paused
suddenly, then his soft lips spread, showing his sharp, white teeth.
Modifying his tone, he continued: "Say, I rather like you, Anderson,
you're such a blamed nuisance. You've half convinced me that you're a
genius."
The younger man's hunger, which had given up in despair, raised its
head and bit into his vitals sharply.
"Maybe I--"
"I've a notion to give you a chance."
"That's all I want," the caller quavered, in a panic. "Just give me a
toe-hold, that's all," His voice broke in spite of his effort to
hold it steady. Burns wasn't a bad sort, after all; just grouchy and
irritable. Perhaps this was merely his way.
Burns continued: "Well, I will give you an assignment, a good
assignment, too, and if you cover it I'll put you on permanently. I'll
do more than that, I'll pay you what we pay our best man, if you make
good. That's fair, isn't it?"
He smiled benignly, and the soon-to-be reporter's wits went capering
off in a hysterical stampede. Anderson felt the desire to wring the
fellow's hand.
"All that counts in this office is efficiency," the latter went on.
"We play no favorites. When a man delivers the goods we boost him;
when he fails we fire him. There's no sentiment here, and I hold my
job merely because I'm the best man in the shop. Can you go to work
to-night?"
"Why--why--yes, sir!"
"Very well. That's the spirit I like. You can take your time on the
story, and you needn't come back till you bring it."
"Yes, sir."
"Now pay attention, here it is. About two weeks ago a blond girl
committed suicide in a Main Street boarding-house. The body's down at
the Morgue now. Find out who she is." He turned back to his desk and
began to work.
The hungry youth behind him experienced a sudden sinking at the
stomach. All at once he became hopelessly empty and friendless, and he
felt his knees urging him to sit down. He next became conscious
that the shoulders of Mr. Burns were shaking a bit, as if he had
encountered a piece of rare humor. After an instant, when Anderson
made no move to go, the man at the desk wheeled about, exposing a
bloated countenance purple with suppressed enjoyment.
"What's the matter?" he giggled. "Don't you want the job? I can't tell
you any more about the girl; that's all we know. The rest is up to
you. You'll find out everything, won't you? Please do, for your own
sake and the sake of _The Intelligencer_. Yes, yes, I'm sure you will,
because you're a good newspaper man--you told me so yourself." His
appreciation of the jest threatened to strangle him.
"Mr. Burns," began the other, "I--I'm up against it. I guess you don't
know it, but I'm hungry. I haven't eaten for three days."
At this the editor became positively apoplectic.
"Oh yes--yes, I do!" He nodded vigorously. "You show it in your face.
That's why I went out of my way to help you. He! He! He! Now you run
along and get me the girl's name and address while I finish this
proof. Then come back and have supper with me at the Press Club."
Again he chortled and snickered, whereupon something sullen and fierce
awoke in young Anderson. He knew of a way to get food and a bed and a
place to work even if it would only last thirty days, for he judged
Burns was the kind of man who would yell for the police in case of an
assault. Paul would have welcomed the prospect of prison fare, but he
reasoned that it would be an incomplete satisfaction merely to mash
the pudgy face of Mr. Burns and hear him clamor. What he wanted at
this moment was a job; Burns's beating could hold over. This suicide
case had baffled the pick of Buffalo's trained reporters; it had
foiled the best efforts of her police; nevertheless, this fat-paunched
fellow had baited a starving man by offering him the assignment. It
was impossible; it was a cruel joke, and yet--there might be a chance
of success. Even while he was debating the point he heard himself say:
"Very well, Mr. Burns. If you want her name I'll get it for you."
He crammed his hat down over his ears and walked out, leaving the
astonished editor gazing after him with open mouth.
Anderson's first impulse had been merely to get out of Burns's office,
out of sight of that grinning satyr, and never to come back, but
before he had reached the street he had decided that it was as well to
starve striving as with folded hands. After all, the dead girl had a
name.
Instead of leaving the building, he went to the files of the paper
and, turning back, uncovered the original story, which he cut out with
his pen-knife, folded up, and placed in his pocket. This done, he
sought the lobby of a near-by hotel, found a seat near a radiator, and
proceeded to read the clipping carefully.
It was a meager story, but it contained facts and was free from the
confusion and distortions of the later accounts, which was precisely
what he wished to guard against. Late one afternoon, so the story
went, the girl had rented a room in a Main Street boarding-house, had
eaten supper and retired. At eleven o'clock the next day, when she did
not respond to a knock on her door, the room had been broken into and
she had been found dead, with an empty morphine-bottle on the bureau.
That was all. There were absolutely no clues to the girl's identity,
for the closest scrutiny failed to discover a mark on her clothing
or any personal articles which could be traced. She had possessed no
luggage, save a little hand-satchel or shopping-bag containing a few
coins. One fact alone stood out in the whole affair. She had paid for
her room with a two-dollar Canadian bill, but this faint clue had been
followed with no result. No one knew the girl; she had walked out of
nowhere and had disappeared into impenetrable mystery. Those were the
facts in the case, and they were sufficiently limited to baffle the
best efforts of Buffalo's trained detective force.
It would seem that there can be no human creature so obscure as to
have neither relatives, friends, nor acquaintances, and yet this
appeared to be the case, for a full description of this girl had
been blazoned in the papers of every large city, had been exposed in
countless country post-offices, and conveyed to the police of every
city of the States and Canada. It was as if the mysterious occupant of
the Morgue had been born of the winter wind on that fateful evening
two weeks before. The country had been dragged by a net of publicity,
that marvelous, fine-meshed fabric from which no living man is small
or shrewd enough to escape, and still the sad, white face at the
Morgue continued to smile out from its halo of gold as if in gentle
mockery.
For a long time Paul Anderson sat staring into the realms of
speculation, his lips white with hunger, his cheeks hollow and
feverish from the battle he had waged. His power of exclusion was
strong, therefore he lost himself to his surroundings. Finally,
however, he roused himself from his abstraction and realized the irony
of this situation. He, the weakest, the most inexperienced of all the
men who had tried, had been set to solve this mystery, and starvation
was to be the fruit of his failure.
He saw that it had begun to snow outside. In the lobby it was warm and
bright and vivid with jostling life; the music of a stringed orchestra
somewhere back of him was calling well-dressed men and women in to
dinner. All of them seemed happy, hopeful, purposeful. He noted,
furthermore, that three days without food makes a man cold, even in
a warm place, and light-headed, too. The north wind had bitten him
cruelly as he crossed the street, and now as he peered out of the
plate-glass windows the night seemed to hold other lurking horrors
besides. His want was like a burden, and he shuddered weakly,
hesitating to venture out where the wind could harry him. It was a
great temptation to remain here where there was warmth and laughter
and life; nevertheless, he rose and slunk shivering out into the
darkness, then laid a course toward the Morgue.
While Anderson trod the snowy streets a slack-jowled editor sat at
supper with some friends at the Press Club, eating and drinking
heartily, as is the custom of newspaper men let down for a moment from
the strain of their work. He had told a story, and his caustic way
of telling it had amused his hearers, for each and every one of them
remembered the shabby applicant for work, and all of them had wasted
baffling hours on the mystery of this girl with the golden hair.
"I guess I put a crimp in him," giggled Mr. Burns. "I gave him a
chance to show those talents he recommends so highly."
"The Morgue, on a night like this, is a pretty dismal place for a
hungry man," said one of the others. "It's none too cheerful in the
daytime."
The others agreed, and Burns wabbled anew in his chair in appreciation
of his humor.
Young Anderson had never seen a morgue, and to-night, owing to his
condition, his dread of it was child-like. It seemed as if this
particular charnel-house harbored some grisly thing which stood
between him and food and warmth and hope; the nearer he drew to it the
greater grew his dread. A discourteous man, shrunken as if from the
chill of the place, was hunched up in front of a glowing stove. He
greeted Anderson sourly:
"Out into that courtyard; turn to the left--second door," he directed.
"She's in the third compartment."
Anderson lacked courage to ask the fellow to come along, but stumbled
out into a snow-filled areaway lighted by a swinging incandescent
which danced to the swirling eddies.
Compartment! He supposed bodies were kept upon slabs or tables, or
something like that. He had steeled himself to see rows of unspeakable
sights, played upon by dripping water, but he found nothing of the
sort.
The second door opened into a room which he discovered was colder than
the night outside, evidently the result of artificial refrigeration.
He was relieved to find the place utterly bare except for a sort of
car or truck which ran around the room on a track beneath a row of
square doors. These doors evidently opened into the compartments
alluded to by the keeper.
Which compartment had the fellow said? Paul abruptly discovered that
he was rattled, terribly rattled, and he turned back out of the place.
He paused shortly, however, and took hold of himself.
"Now, now!" he said, aloud. "You're a bum reporter, my boy." An
instant later he forced himself to jerk open the first door at his
hand.
For what seemed a full minute he stared into the cavern, as if
petrified, then he closed the door softly. Sweat had started from his
every pore. Alone once more in the great room, he stood shivering.
"God!" he muttered. This was newspaper training indeed.
He remembered now having read, several days before, about an Italian
laborer who had been crushed by a falling column. To one unaccustomed
to death in any form that object, head-on in the obscurity of the
compartment, had been a trying sight. He began to wonder if it were
really cold or stiflingly hot.
The boy ground his teeth and flung open the next door, slamming it
hurriedly again to blot out what it exposed. Why didn't they keep them
covered? Why didn't they show a card outside? Must he examine every
grisly corpse upon the premises?
He stepped to the third door and wrenched it open. He knew the girl at
once by her wealth of yellow hair and the beauty of her still, white
face. There was no horror here, no ghastly sight to weaken a man's
muscles and sicken his stomach; only a tired girl asleep. Anderson
felt a great pity as he wheeled the truck opposite the door and
reverently drew out the slab on which the body lay. He gazed upon her
intently for some time. She was not at all as he had pictured her, and
yet there could be no mistake. He took the printed description from
his pocket and reread it carefully, comparing it point by point. When
he had finished he found that it was a composite word photograph,
vaguely like and yet totally unlike the person it was intended to
portray, and so lacking in character that no one knowing the original
intimately would have been likely to recognize her from it.
So that was why no word had come in answer to all this newspaper
publicity. After all, this case might not be so difficult as it had
seemed; for the first time the dispirited youth felt a faint glow of
encouragement. He began to formulate a plan.
Hurriedly he fumbled for his note-book, and there, in that house
of death, with his paper propped against the wall, he wrote a
two-hundred-word description; a description so photographically exact
that to this day it is preserved in the Buffalo police archives as a
perfect model.
He replaced the body in its resting-place and went out. There was no
chill in him now, no stumbling nor weakness of any sort. He had found
a starting-point, had uncovered what all those trained newspaper men
had missed, and he felt that he had a chance to win.
Twenty minutes later Burns, who had just come in from supper, turned
back from his desk with annoyance and challenge in his little, narrow
eyes.
"Well?"
"I think I've got her, Mr. Burns."
"Nonsense!"
"Anyhow, I've got a description that her father or her mother or
her friends can recognize. The one you and the other papers printed
disguised her so that nobody could tell who she was--it might have
covered a hundred girls."
Rapidly, and without noting the editor's growing impatience, Paul read
the two descriptions, then ran on, breathlessly:
"All we have to do is print ten or twenty thousand of these and mail
them out with the morning edition--separate sheets, posters, you
understand?--so they can be nailed up in every post-office within two
hundred miles. Send some to the police of all the cities, and we'll
have a flash in twenty-four hours."
Burns made no comment for a moment. Instead, he looked the young man
over angrily from his eager face to his unblacked shoes. His silence,
his stare, were eloquent.
"Why? Why not?" Anderson demanded, querulously. "I tell you this
description isn't right. It--it's nothing like her, nothing at all."
"Say! I thought I'd seen the last of you," growled the corpulent man.
"Aren't you on to yourself yet?"
"Do you--mean that your talk this evening don't go?" Paul demanded,
quietly. "Do you mean to say you won't even give me the chance you
promised?"
"No! I don't mean that. What I said goes, all right, but I told _you_
to identify this girl. I didn't agree to do it. What d'you think this
paper is, anyhow? We want stories in this office. We don't care who or
what this girl is unless there's a story in her. We're not running a
job-print shop nor a mail-order business to identify strayed females.
Twenty thousand posters! Bah! And say--don't you know that no two men
can write similar descriptions of anybody or anything? What's the
difference whether her hair is burnished gold or 'raw gold' or her
eyes bluish gray instead of grayish blue? Rats! Beat it!"
"But I tell you--"
"What's her name? Where does she live? What killed her? That's what I
want to know. I'd look fine, wouldn't I, circularizing a dead story?
Wouldn't that be a laugh on me? No, Mr. Anderson, author, artist, and
playwright, I'm getting damned tired of being pestered by you, and you
needn't come back here until you bring the goods. Do I make myself
plain?"
It was anger which cut short the younger man's reply. On account of
petty economy, for fear of ridicule, this editor refused to relieve
some withered old woman, some bent and worried old man, who might be,
who probably were, waiting, waiting, waiting in some out-of-the-way
village. So Anderson reflected. Because there might not be a story in
it this girl would go to the Potter's Field and her people would never
know. And yet, by Heaven, they _would_ know! Something told him there
_was_ a story back of this girl's death, and he swore to get it. With
a mighty effort he swallowed his chagrin and, disregarding the insult
to himself, replied:
"Very well. I've got you this time."
"Humph!" Burns grunted, viciously.
"I don't know how I'll turn the trick, but I'll turn it." For the
second time that evening he left the office with his jaws set
stubbornly.
Paul Anderson walked straight to his boarding-house and bearded his
landlady. "I've got a job," said he.
"I'm very glad," the lady told him, honestly enough. "I feared you
were going to move out."
"Yes!" he repeated. "I've got a job that carries the highest salary
on the paper. You remember the yellow-haired girl who killed herself
awhile ago?" he asked.
"Indeed I do. Everybody knows about that case."
"Well, it got too tough for the police and the other reporters, so
they turned it over to me. It's a bully assignment, and my pay starts
when I solve the mystery. Now I'm starved; I wish you'd rustle me some
grub."
"But, Mr. Anderson, you're bill for this week? You know I get paid
in--"
"Tut, tut! You know how newspapers are. They don't pay in advance, and
I can't pay you until they pay me. You'll probably have to wait until
Saturday, for I'm a little out of practice on detective stuff. But
I'll have this thing cleared up by then. You don't appreciate--you
_can't_ appreciate--what a corking assignment it is."
Anderson had a peculiarly engaging smile, and five minutes later he
was wrecking the pantry of all the edibles his fellow-boarders had
overlooked, the while his landlady told him her life's history, wept
over the memory of her departed husband, and confessed that she hoped
to get out of the boarding-house business some time.
A good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast put the young man in fine
fettle, and about ten o'clock he repaired to a certain rooming-house
on Main Street, the number of which he obtained from the clipping in
his pocket.
A girl answered his ring, but at sight of him she shut the door
hurriedly, explaining through the crack:
"Mrs. MacDougal is out and you can't come in."
"But I want to talk to you."
"I'm not allowed to talk to reporters," she declared. "Mrs. MacDougal
won't let me."
A slight Scotch accent gave Anderson his cue. "MacDougal is a good
Scotch name. I'm Scotch myself, and so are you." He smiled his
boarding-house smile, and the girl's eyes twinkled back at him.
"Didn't she tell you I was coming?"
"Why, no, sir. Aren't you a reporter?"
"I've been told that I'm not. I came to look at a room."
"What room?" the girl asked, quickly. "We haven't any vacant rooms."
"That's queer," Anderson frowned. "I can't be mistaken. I'm sure Mrs.
MacDougal said there was one."