VARNEY MEETS HIS ENEMY AND IS DISARMED
Varney crossed the square in the gathering dusk and went slowly up Main
Street, looking about him as he walked. He had wrenched his ankle
slightly in one of his falls upon the _Cypriani's_ deck, and the
four-mile walk over the ruts of the River road to the town had done it
no good. Worse yet, it had made the trip down from the yacht laboriously
slow, and he was harried with the fear that the irreparable damage might
already have been done.
If it had not, if no reporter had yet gone to the Carstairs house, his
one possible hope of escape stood before him like a palm-tree in a
plain. Stiffened and strengthened by all his difficulties, his resolve
to win throbbed and mounted within him; but he faced the knowledge that
the odds now were heavily against him. On the long chance, he had played
a desperate game, had come within an ace of winning, and had lost. His
great secret which, beyond any other purpose, he had meant to guard to
the end, was glaringly out. Now it was the iron heart of his will that
it should go no further. Talkative young Hammerton had given him the
hint how that might be accomplished; and if the method was extreme, it
would be sure. Whatever the cost, it would be a small price to pay for
keeping his name, and Uncle Elbert's, out of ruinous headlines in
to-morrow's papers.
Two blocks further on he came opposite a neat, three-story brick
building, across the width of which was a black and gold signboard,
lettered THE GAZETTE. Below it was the large plate-glass window of a
counting-room, now dark. On the left was a lighted doorway, leading
upstairs.
Varney crossed, climbed the stairs, found himself in a narrow upstairs
hall, rapped upon a closed ground-glass door bearing the legend
"Editorial." From within, a voice of unenthusiasm bade him enter, and he
went in, closing the door behind him.
In a swivel-chair by an open roller-top desk, a young man sat, idly
smoking a cigarette, his back to the door, his languorous feet hung out
of the window. There were electric lights in the room, but they were not
lit. All the illumination that there was came from a single dingy
gas-fixture stuck in the wall near the desk, but that was enough.
Varney came closer. "Smith," said he.
"Well," said Smith.
"I have come to see you."
"Well--look away," said Smith.
There was not a trace of the "Hast thou found me?" in the editor's voice
or his manner. If he expected assassination, he did not appear to mind.
He sat on without turning, staring apathetically out of the window, just
as he had done when he watched Varney cross and come in at his door.
"I have come," said Varney, "because I understand that you are the sole
owner, as well as the editor, of this paper. Am I right?"
Smith lit a fresh cigarette, flipped the old one out of the window and
paused to watch the boys outside fight for it. Half-smoked stubs came
frequently out of that window when Mr. Smith sat there and many boys in
Hunston knew it.
"Assuming that you are?" queried he.
"Assuming that," said Varney, "I'll say that I have come to buy this
paper. And to discharge you from the editorship."
Smith drew in his feet, and swung slowly around. The two men measured
each other in an interval of intelligent silence. On the whole, upon
this close view, Varney found it harder to think of Smith as a
contemptible cur who circulated lying slanders for profit than as the
young man who wrote the famous editorials.
"And still they come," said Smith, enigmatically. "Three of them in one
day--well, well!" And he added musingly: "So I have stung you as hard as
that, have I?"
"Let us say rather," said Varney, whose present tack was diplomacy,
"that I have some loose money which I want to stow away in a paying
little enterprise."
"I am the last man in the world to boast of a kindness," continued
Smith, in his faintly mocking manner, "but I gave you fair warning to
leave town."
"Instead I stayed. And an exceedingly interesting town I have found it.
Something doing every minute. But, as I just remarked, I have looked in
to buy your paper."
"If I were like some I know," meditated Smith, "I'd be thinking: 'The
Lord has delivered him into my hand, aye, delivered dear old Beany.' I'd
embarrass you with questions, make you blush with catechisms. But I am a
merciful man, and observe that I ask you nothing. You want to buy the
_Gazette_ for an investment. Let it stand at that. So you're the
money-grubbing sort that supposes that everything on God's hassock has
its price?"
"I believe it's street knowledge that the _Gazette_ has its. But I
called really not so much to discuss ethics, as to ascertain your
figure."
Smith gave a sigh which was not without its trace of mockery.
"'Fortunately, I am hardened to insults. Editors are expected to stand
anything. Times are dull--nothing much to do--drop around and kick the
editor. You've no idea what we have to put up with from spring poets
alone. Rejoice, B----, that is, Mr.--er--Blank, that the _Gazette_ is
never to be yours."
"You can't mean that you decline to sell?"
"When I implied to you just now that I was sole owner of the _Gazette_,
I was, of course, speaking rather reminiscently than in the strict light
of present facts."
"What do you mean by that?"
"That I sold the _Gazette_ at four o'clock this afternoon."
For an instant the room whirled and Varney saw nothing in it but the odd
eyes of Coligny Smith steadily fixing him. By the shock of that blow, he
realized that, after all, he had wholly counted upon succeeding in
this. From the moment when he had turned his stateroom key on
unconscious Charlie Hammerton, he had recognized it as his one chance.
And now he was too late. Clever Ryan, who missed nothing, doubtless
suspecting that the faithless editor who had sold out once to him might
now be planning to do it again to a higher bidder, had outstripped him.
And the _Gazette_ to-morrow would damn him utterly.
But Varney's face, as these thoughts came to him, wore a faint,
non-committal smile. "That is final, I suppose?"
"As death, so far as I am concerned. I leave Hunston permanently
to-morrow morning."
"Who was the buyer?"
"There is really no reason why I should divulge his confidence that I
know of; but, curses on me, I'll do it if you'll tell me this: Where is
Charles Hammerton?"
Varney laid his hat and stick on the table, to rid his hands of them,
and faced Mr. Smith, leaning lightly against it.
"I came here, Smith, to ask questions, not to answer them. On second
thoughts, I withdraw my last one, for I can guess the answer. But before
we proceed further, I want you to tell me this: what made you sell?"
The editor pitched another cigarette-end out of the window. Again a
shout from the street indicated that it had become a bone of bitter
contest among the town's smokers of the _sub-rosa_ class.
"Suppose I were to tell you," said Smith slowly, "that I anticipate a
shakeup here which will cut the backbone out of my profits? What would
you say to that?"
"I suppose I should say that it was ever the custom of rats to desert a
sinking ship. So that was your mainspring, was it?"
"On the contrary," said Smith. "I am taking what is technically known as
a small rise out of you. You ask why I sold. It was a man with the
price. Money," began Mr. Smith, "screams. The cash on my desk was this
man's way of doing business, and a good deal it was. However, it'll net
him six per cent year in and out, at that--a good rate in these lean
times. I, of course, did better. I got--shall we say?--pickings. The
past tense already, heigho! Well, it's been a most instructive life. My
father taught me to write. He was esteemed a good editor, and he was,
but at eighteen I was correcting his leaders for him. Hand Greeley a
soft pencil and a pass at the encyclopedia, so he used to say, and he
could prove anything under the sun. I am like that, except that--well, I
don't believe I need the encyclopedia. It wasn't Greeley who made the
remark, of course. It's a rule on the press to pin all journalistic
anecdotes on Greeley. You sign the pledge when you go in. To be
accounted strictly moral," continued Smith, "an editor must be blind in
one eye and astigmatic in the other. Then he rings the bull's-eye of
Virtue ten times out of ten, and the clergy bleats with delight. You
can't find spiritual candor anywhere with a telescope, except in the
criminal classes. There are no Pharisees there, God be praised! For my
part, I see both sides of every question that was ever asked, and
usually--don't you think?--both of them are right. I first adopt my
point of view and subsequently prove it. Obviously, this is where the
pickings come in. My grandfather started this paper on two hundred and
fifty dollars, fifty dollars of which, I have heard, was his own. I
could knock off for life as an idle member of the predatory classes, I
suppose, but after all, I was made for an editor. In years past, I have,
of course, had my offers from New York. Two of them were left open
forever, and a little while ago, I telegraphed down and took the best. A
grateful wire came in five minutes ahead of you. And that," he concluded
wearily, in the flattest tones of a curiously flat voice, "is the life
story of C. Smith, editor, up to the hour of going to press."
Varney, who had never once been tempted to interrupt this strange
apologia, struggled with an impulse to feel desperately sorry for Mr.
Smith, and almost overcame it.
"Smith," he said, in a moment, "why don't you tell me why you sold?"
The editor got up and stared out of the window. Presently he turned, an
odd faint flush tingeing his ordinarily colorless cheek. His air of
smooth cynicism was gone, for once; and Varney saw then, as he had
somehow suspected before, that the editor of the _Gazette_ wore polished
bravado as a cloak and that underneath it he carried a rather troubled
soul.
"You are right," said Smith, "I--was twigging you again. Let us say,"
he added, looking at Varney with a kind of shamefaced defiance, "that a
man gets tired of living on pickings after a while."
If he had been ten times a liar, ten times a slanderer and assassin of
character, a man would have known that the young editor spoke the truth
then. That knowledge disarmed Varney. To have sold the _Gazette_ to one
who would prostitute it still further was hardly a noble act; but for
Smith it meant unmistakably that he wanted to cut loose from the old
evil walks where he had done ill by his honor and battened exceedingly.
"All along," said Varney slowly, "I have had a kind of sneaking feeling
that there was a spark left in you yet."
He picked up his hat and stick again, and faced the pale young editor.
"Smith, you have done me a devilish wrong. You have knowingly printed a
vile slander about me, aware that the natural result of your falsehood
was that some poor drunken fool would shoot me down from behind. When I
walked in here five minutes ago, I had two purposes in mind. One was to
buy your paper. The other was to throw you down the front stairs. I am
leaving now without doing either. I abandoned the first because I had
to; I abandon the second, voluntarily, because--I don't quite know
why--but I think it is because it seems inappropriate to hit a man when
he is down and something is just driving him to try to scramble up."
He put on his hat and started to go; but Smith stopped him with a
gesture. He let his eye, from which all sign of emotion had faded, run
slowly over Varney's slender figure.
"I wasn't such a slouch in my younger days," he said. "Football at my
prep school, football and crew at my college. Boxed some at odd moments;
was counted fair to middling. Some offhand practice since with people
I've roasted--agents, actors, and the like. As to that throwing
downstairs proposition now, if you'd care to try it on--"
Varney shook his head. "I don't know that I can explain it--and no one
regrets it more than I--but all the wish to _smash_ you, Smith, has gone
away somewhere. The bottom has dropped out of it. Good-bye."
"You are going? So am I," said Smith, with a fair imitation of his usual
lightness. "Going away for good. I hope you will come through this all
right. I'll never see you again. Shake hands, will you? You couldn't
know it, of course, but--it--is possible that I owe something to--you
two fellows."
He stood motionless, half turned away, thin hands hanging loosely at his
sides.
Varney, who had colored slightly, took a last look at him. "No," he
said, suddenly much embarrassed, "I--I'm afraid I couldn't do it in the
way you mean, and so there wouldn't be any point in it. But I--I do wish
you luck with all my heart."
He shut the door, and started down the stairway; and he straightway
forgot Smith in the returning tide of his own difficulties. He saw
clearly that there was no longer any hope; his plans were wrecked past
mending. Persuading Miss Carstairs to keep her engagement to-morrow, his
one great problem this morning, had become an unimportant detail now.
Charlie Hammerton, with his merciless knowledge, filled the whole
horizon like a menacing mirage.
It would not be enough to close the boy's month till after the luncheon
and then let it open to babble. For Elbert Carstairs had flatly drawn
the line at a yellow aftermath of sensation. He would count a tall-typed
scandal the day after to-morrow, when his daughter was with him, fully
as bad as the same affliction now. And, the newspaper finally lost to
them, there was no conceivable way in which that scandal could be
averted now.
But about the moment when his foot hit the bottom of the worn stairs,
the door at the head of them burst open, and a curiously stirred voice,
which he had some difficulty in recognizing as Smith's, called his name.
"Varney! oh, Varney! I--really meant to tell you--and then I forgot."
He turned and saw the editor's pale face hanging over the banisters.
"It was Maginnis I sold the _Gazette_ to, you know--Peter Maginnis. I
wouldn't have sold it to anybody else. You'll find him at the hotel
eating supper."
Varney, looking at him, knew then what it was that Smith thought he owed
to him and Maginnis.
He went back up the stairs and the two men shook hands in rather an
agitated silence.