CHAPTER VIII

ENTER THE VILLAIN

It is conceded, I believe, that every story should have a moral; also,

whenever possible, a heroine or a hero, a villainess or a villain, a

plot and a climax. Now this story has a villain of sorts, if you choose

to look upon him in that light; but no hero, and no climax. And

certainly there is no moral to adorn the tale. So far as I have been

able to discover it is absolutely moral-less. So then, reader, if you,

being thus foreadvised regarding these avowed shortcomings of my

narrative, choose to go further with it, the responsibility must be

yours and not mine. Don't you come round afterward saying I didn't warn

you.

The rise of the curtain discloses the city room of _The Clarion_, a New

York morning newspaper. The hour is six-thirty P. M., the period is the

approximate present, and the season is summer time. At a desk in the

foreground is discovered the head office boy in the act of scissoring

certain marked passages out of copies of the afternoon papers and

impaling them upon spindles. Beyond him, at a big oaken table shaped

like half of a pie, a lone copy reader is humped in his chair, chewing

on a cold pipestem and editing a bad piece of copy with a relentless

black lead. In this case the copy reader is named Hemburg. He is of a

type of which at least one example is to be found in nearly every large

newspaper shop--a competent failure, gone alcoholically to seed; usually

holding down a desk job; rarely quite drunk and rarely quite sober, and

in this mid-state of befuddlement performing his work with a strange

mechanical accuracy; but once in a while he comes on duty cold

sober--cause unknown--and then the chances are he does something

unpardonably wrong, something incredibly stupid, which costs him his

job. Just such a man is this present man Hemburg. As, shoving his

pencil, he carves the very giblets out of the last sheet of the belated

typewritten manuscript lying under his hand, the sunlight, slanting in

at a west window behind him, falls over his shoulders in a streaked

flood, making his reddened face seem redder than ever--as red as hearth

paint--and turning his ears a bright, clear, pinkish colour, as though

they might be two little memorial panes set there in dedication to the

wasted life and the frittered talents of their owner.

Farther up stage the city-hall reporter, who because he has passed his

fortieth birthday and has grey in his hair is known as Pop, and the

ship-news reporter, who because he is the ship-news reporter is known as

Skipper, the same as in all well-regulated newspaper offices, are

pasting up their strings, both of them being space men. Otherwise the

big bare room with its rows of desks and its scrap-strewn floor is quite

empty. This hour, coming between six and seven, in the city room of _The

Clarion_ or any other big paper, is apt to be the quietest of all hours

between starting time, early in the afternoon, and quitting time, early

in the morning. The day city editor, having finished his stint, has gone

off watch, leaving behind for his successor, the night city editor,

a single scrawled sheet upon which is recorded the tally of things

accomplished, things undertaken and things failed at. The reporters who

got afternoon assignments have most of them turned in their stories and

have taken other assignments which will keep them out of the office

until much later. So almost an ecclesiastical quiet fills the city room

now.

For the matter of that, it is only in the dramatic versions that a

newspaper office ever attains the aspect of frenzied tumult so familiar

and so agreeable to patrons of plays purporting to deal with newspaper

life. As usually depicted upon the stage, a city room near press time is

something like a skating rink, something like the recreation hall of a

madhouse, something like a munitions factory working overtime on war

orders, and nothing at all like a city room. Even when its manifold

activities are in full swing the actual city room, save for the click of

typewriter keys, is apt to be as sedately quiet as--let's see now! What

would make a suitable comparison? Well--as sedately quiet, say, as the

reading room of the average Carnegie Library.

Six-thirty-four--enter the villain.

The practical door at the right opened and Mr. Foxman came in. In just

what he stood in he might have posed for the typical picture of the

typical New York business man; not the tired business man for whom the

musical shows are supposed to be written but the kind of business man

who does not tire so easily. A close-cropped, greyish moustache, a pair

of nose glasses riding a short, pugnacious nose in front of two keen

eyes, a well-knit middle-age shape inside of a smart-fitting suit, a

positive jaw, an air of efficiency and a square shoulder--that briefly

would be Mr. Hobart Foxman, managing editor of _The Clarion_.

His nod included the city-hall reporter and the ship-news man. Passing

by Hemburg without speaking, he halted a minute alongside the desk where

the head copy boy speared his shearings upon his battery of spindles.

"Singlebury come in yet?" asked Mr. Foxman.

"No, sir; not yet, sir," said the head copy boy. "But he's due any

minute now, I guess. I phoned him you wanted to see him at a quarter to

seven."

"When he comes tell him to come right into my office."

"Yes, sir; I'll tell him, sir."

"Did you get those envelopes out of the morgue that I telephoned you

about?"

"Yes, sir; they're all four of 'em on your desk, sir," said the boy, and

he made as though to get up from his seat.

"Never mind," said Mr. Foxman. "I guess I can find them without any

help. ... Oh, yes, Benny, I'm not to be disturbed during the next hour

for anything. Nobody is to see me except Singlebury. Understand?"

"Yes, sir--nobody," said Benny. "I'll remember, sir."

Inside his own room, which opened directly upon the city room, Mr.

Foxman brushed from his desk a neatly piled file of the afternoon

papers, glanced through a heap of mail--some personal mail, but mostly

official--without opening any of the letters, and then gave his

attention to four big soiled manila envelopes which rested side by side

upon his wide blue blotter pad. One of these envelopes was labelled,

across its upper front, "Blake, John W."; the second was labelled

"Bogardus, S. P."; the third, "Pratt, Ezra"; and the fourth, "Pearl

Street Trolley Line." Each of the four bulged dropsically with its

contents, which contents, when Mr. Foxman had bent back the envelope

flaps and emptied the envelopes, proved to be sheafs of newspaper

clippings, some frayed with handling and yellowed with age, some still

fresh and crisp, and all bearing the stencilled identification mark of

the functionary who runs what is called in some shops the obit

department and in other shops the morgue.

Keeping each set in its own separate pile, Mr. Foxman began running

through these clippings, now and then putting aside one for future

consideration. In the midst of this he broke off to take up his desk

telephone and, when the girl at the private switchboard upstairs

answered, bade her ring for him a certain private number, not to be

found in the telephone directory.

"That you, Moreau?" briskly asked Mr. Foxman when, after a short wait,

a voice at the other end of the wire spoke. "How are you? ... Quite

well, thank you. ... I want to speak with the general. ... Yes, yes,

yes, I know that, but this is important--very important. ... Yes, I

know that too; but I won't detain him but a minute. ... Thanks. ... Yes,

I'll wait right here."

There was another little delay while Mr. Foxman held the receiver to his

ear and kept his lips close to the transmitter. Then:

"Good evening, general--Foxman speaking."

Into the managing editor's tone was come a soothed and softened

deference--something of the same deference which Benny, the head office

boy, had used in addressing Mr. Foxman. It was a different tone, very,

from the sharpened, almost staccato note that Mr. Foxman had been

employing but a minute before. Why not? Moreau was but the great man's

private secretary and this man, whom now he addressed, was the great man

himself--General Robert Bruce Lignum, sole proprietor of _The

Clarion_--and the only person, barring himself, from whom Mr. Foxman

took orders. Big fleas, you know, have smaller fleas which on them prey;

but while preying, the little fleas, if they be little fleas wise in

their own generation, are, I take it, likely to cultivate between bites

and to use that flattering conversational accent which, the world over,

is the most subtle tribute that may be paid by the smaller to the

greater and by the greater to the most great. In this agreeably tempered

tempo then Mr. Foxman continued, with pauses for his employer's replies.

"Sorry, general, to have to call you just as you're starting for the

pier, but I was particularly anxious to catch you before you left the

house." Instinctively he lowered his voice, although there was no need

for any excess of caution. "General, I think I've got that trolley-grab

exposé practically lined up. Bogardus told me this afternoon that the

third man--you know the one I mean--is ready to talk. It looks to me

like a bigger thing even than we thought it might be. It's a scurvy crew

we're dealing with, but the end justifies the means. Don't you think so,

sir? ... Yes, that's right, too--when thieves fall out honest men get

their due. ... Sir? ... Yes, that's my idea, too--to spring the first

big story right out of a clear sky and then follow up with an editorial

campaign and supplementary news stories until we get action in the

district-attorney's office. ... How's that, sir? ... Oh, no, indeed,

general, not the slightest particle of danger in my opinion. Personally,

I think all this talk about floating mines and submarines has been

greatly exaggerated. ... I think you can go right ahead in perfect

safety. You must know, general, that I wouldn't be giving you this

advice if I thought there was the slightest danger. ... Well, good-by,

general, and pleasant voyage. ... Oh, yes, indeed, I'll surely find some

way of keeping you posted about the situation at Albany if anything

develops in that quarter. ... Well, good-by again, general."

He hung up the receiver and turned his hands again to the contents of

the morgue envelopes. He was still at this when there came at his door

a knock.

"Come in," he said without looking up.

The man who entered was tall and slender, young enough to be well this

side of thirty and old enough, in his experiences, to wear that manner

of schooled, appraising disillusionment which marks so many of his

calling. Most good reporters look like good reporters; they radiate

from them knowledge, confidence, skepticism, sometimes a little of

pessimism, and always a good deal of sophisticated enthusiasm. It is the

same air which goes with men, be their separate callings what they may,

who have devoted their lives to prying open the lid of the world to see

what makes the thing tick. They have a curiosity not only to see the

wheels go round but to find out what the motive power behind and beneath

the wheels may be.

Never mind what the after-dinner speaker says--the press is not an

Archimedean lever and probably never was. It is a kit containing a cold

chisel, a test acid, an assay chemical and a paint-box. Generally the

users of this outfit bear themselves accordingly. Once in a while,

though, there comes along a reporter who deceivingly resembles a rather

stupid, good-natured plumber's helper dressed in his Sunday best. To

look at him he seems as plain as an old shoe, as open as an old shoe

too. But if you have something to hide from the public gaze, beware this

person. He is the most dangerous one of them all. His business being

everybody's business, he is prepared to go to any ends to dig it out. As

a professional detective he could make himself famous. He prefers to

remain a journeyman reporter.

"Take a chair, Singlebury," said Mr. Foxman; "I'll be through here in

just a minute."

Singlebury sat down, glancing about him. It was the first time he had

seen this room. He had been on _The Clarion's_ staff less than a month,

having come on from the West, where he served the years of his

apprenticeship on a San Francisco daily. Presently his chief swivelled

half round so as to face him.

"Young man," he said, "I've got a cracking good assignment for you--one

that ought to put you in right, in this shop and this town. Ordinarily

this job would go to Shesgren--he usually handles this sort of thing for

me--but Shesgren is up at Albany keeping his eye on General Lignum's

political fences, and I don't want to call him back, especially as the

general is leaving the country to-night. Besides you did a good job of

work last week on that Oskarson baby-stealing mystery, and so I've

decided to give you a chance to swing this story."

"Thank you, sir," said Singlebury, flushing up a little. "I'll do my

best, sir."

"Your best won't do--you've got to do better than your best. Did you

ever hear, since you came to this town, of the Pearl Street trolley line

or the Pearl Street trolley loop?"

"Well," said Singlebury, "I know there is such a line as the Pearl

Street line. That's about all."

"That needn't hamper you," said Mr. Foxman. "I'd a little rather you

went at this thing with an open mind, anyhow. These clippings here"--he

tapped one heap of them with his forefinger--"ought to give you a pretty

clear idea of the situation in the past, if you'll read 'em through

carefully. They'll show you that the Pearl Street line has been a sort

of financial football for certain interests down in Wall Street for a

good many years. The fellows behind it starved it to death and let the

equipment run down while they juggled the paper and skinned the dear

public."

"I see," said Singlebury; "same old story--plenty of water for the road

but no solid nourishment for the investors."

"That's a good line," commended Mr. Foxman; "better save it up for your

story and use it there. But it's not the same old story over again. At

least this time there's a new twist to it.

"Up until now the crowd that have been manipulating the stock stayed

inside the law, no matter what else they may have done that was shady.

But I have cause to believe that a new gang has stepped in--a gang

headed by John W. Blake of the Blake Bank. You've heard of him, I

guess?"

Singlebury nodded.

"It's been known for some time on the inside that the Blake outfit were

figuring on a merger of some of the independent East Side surface

lines--half a dozen scattered lines, more or less. There've been stories

printed about this--we printed some of them ourselves. What hasn't been

known was that they had their hooks into the Pearl Street line too. Poor

outcast as it is, the Pearl Street line, with the proposed Pearl Street

loop round Five Points--a charter was granted for that extension some

time ago--will form the connecting link to the combination they're

figuring on. And then on top of that there's the direct connection to be

made with the new Brooklyn subway that's being built now. If you'll look

at the map of the East Side lines you'll see for yourself how important

it is for the group that intends to take control of the trolley lines on

this side of the river and hopes to control the subway to the other side

of the river that they should have the Pearl Street loop in their grip.

With it they win; without it there's doubt of the success of their plan.

"Well, that part of it is legitimate enough, I suppose. The common stock

of the Pearl Street line has been shoved down and down and down, until

to-day it touched twenty. And Blake's crowd on the quiet have been

buying it in--freezing out the small stockholders as they went along,

and knowing mighty good and well that the day they announced their

merger the stock would go up with a jump--thirty or forty or fifty

points maybe--and then they'd clean up. Well, I suppose that's

legitimate too--at least it's recognised as regular on Wall Street,

provided you can get away with it. But behind the scenes there's been

some outright, downright, grand larceny going on and, along with that,

legislative corruption too.

"The stealing has been covered up so far, under a blanket of legal

embroidery and fancy phraseology. Trust a wise outfit of lawyers, like

the outfit Blake has on his pay roll, to attend to those little details.

But I have reason to believe, having got hold of the inside story from

strictly private sources, that the gang now in control have laid

themselves liable to prison sentences by a few of the tricks they've

pulled off. For instance, they haven't let a little thing like bribery

stand in their way. They weren't satisfied to stifle a competitive

interest politely and quietly, according to the Wall Street standards.

No; these thugs just naturally clubbed it to death. I guess they saw so

much in it for themselves they took a long chance on being indicted if

the facts ever came out. And I happen to know where we can get the facts

if we go about it in the right way. Listen, carefully!"

For five minutes he talked on, expounding and explaining in

straightaway, sharp sentences. And Singlebury, on the edge of his chair,

listening, felt the lust of the big-game hunter quicken within him.

Every real reporter is a big-game hunter at heart, and the weapon he

uses frequently is a deadly one, even though it is nothing more than a

lead pencil costing five cents at any stationery shop. The scent was in

his nose now, dilating his nostrils; he wriggled to take the trail.

"Now, then, you've got the inside dope, as I get it myself," said Mr.

Foxman at the end of those pregnant five minutes. "You can see for

yourself, though, that a good deal of it--the vital part of it as it

stands now--is mostly surmise and suspicion. Naturally, we can't go to

the bat against this gang with suspicions; we'd probably land in jail

ourselves for criminal libel, instead of landing a few of them in jail,

as we hope to do. But if we can prove up--if we can get hold of the rest

of the evidence--it'll make one of the sweetest beats that was ever

pulled off in this town.

"Of course, as you can see, John W. Blake is the principal figure in the

whole intrigue, just as the Pearl Street line is the key to the merger

scheme. But you stay away from Blake. Don't go near him--yet. If he gets

wind of what we are figuring on doing here in this office he might have

influence enough to make trouble for us before we're ready for the big

blow-off. Leave Blake out of it for the time being--leave him strictly

alone! He can do his talking and his explaining after we've smoked the

nigger out of the woodpile. But here are two other men"--he touched the

remaining piles of sorted-out clippings--"who are willing, under cover,

to indulge in a little conversation. I want you to read these morgue

clippings, more to get an angle on their personalities than for any

other reason. Bogardus--Samuel P. Bogardus--used to be Blake's best

little trained performing lobbyist. When it comes to handling the

members of a general assembly or a board of aldermen he's fuller of

cute tricks than a clown dog is. Old Pratt is a different kind of

crook--a psalm-singing, pussyfooted old buccaneer, teaching a Bible

class on Sundays and thimblerigging in Wall Street on week days. As a

Pharisee who's working at the trade he'd make any Pharisee you ever ran

across out yonder on the Pacific Slope, where you came from, look like

a piker.

"Well, for reasons best known to themselves they happen just at present

to be sore at Blake. There's been a falling-out. He may have used them

to do his dirty work in the past; and then, when this melon is ripe to

cut, frozen both of them out of the picnic. I don't care anything about

their quarrels, or their motives either; I am after this story.

"Now, then, here's your campaign: You take to-night off--I'll tell the

night city editor I've assigned you on a special detail--and you spend

the evening reading up on these clippings, so you'll have the

background--the local colour for your story--all in your head. To-morrow

morning at ten o'clock you go to the Wampum Club up on East Fiftieth

Street and send your name in to Mr. Bogardus. He'll be waiting there in

a private room for you, and old Pratt will be with him. We'll have to

keep them under cover, of course, and protect them up to the limit, in

exchange for the stuff they're willing to give up to us. So you're not

to mention them as the sources of any part of your information. Don't

name them in your story or to anybody on earth before or after we print

it. Take all the notes you please while you're with them, but keep your

notes put away where nobody can see 'em, and tear 'em up as soon as

you're done with 'em. They'll probably keep you there a couple of hours,

because they've got a lot to tell, son; take it from me they have. Well,

say they keep you three hours. That'll give you time to get your lunch

and catch the subway and be down town by two-thirty.

"At three o'clock to-morrow afternoon you go to the law offices of

Myrowitz, Godfrey, Godfrey & Murtha in the Pyramid Building on Cedar

Street. Ask to see Mr. Murtha. Send your name in to him; he'll be

expecting you. Murtha is in the firm now, but he gets out on the

fifteenth--four days from now. There's been a row there, too, I believe,

and the other partners are shoving him out into the cold. He's sore.

Murtha ought to be able to tell the rest of what you'll have to know in

order to make our story absolutely libel proof. It may take some digging

on your part, but he'll come through if you only go at him the right

way. In questioning him you can probably take your cues from what

Bogardus and Pratt have already told you. That end of it, though, is up

to you. Anyhow, by this time to-morrow night you ought to have your

whole story lined up."

"Do you want me to come back here then and write it for the next

morning?" asked Singlebury.

"I don't want you to write it here at all," said Mr. Foxman. "This thing

is too big and means too much for us to be taking a chance on a leak

anywhere. Have you got a quiet room to yourself where nobody can break

in on you?"

"Yes, sir," said Singlebury. "I'm living at the Godey Arms Hotel."

"All right then," said Mr. Foxman. "You rent a typewriter and have it

sent up to your room to-morrow morning. When you are ready to start you

get inside that room and sit down at that typewriter with the door

locked behind you, and you stay there till you've finished your yarn.

You ought to be able to do it in a day, by steady grinding. When you're

done tear up all your notes and burn the scraps. Then put your copy in a

sealed envelope and bring it down here and deliver it to me, personally,

here in this room--understand? If I'm busy with somebody else when you

get here wait until I'm alone. And in the meantime, don't tell the city

editor or any member of the staff, or your closest friend, or your best

girl--if you've got one--that you are working on this story. You've not

only got to get it but you've got to keep your mouth shut while you're

getting it and after you've got it--got to keep mum until we print it.

There'll be time enough for you to claim credit when the beat is on the

street."

"I understand, sir," said Singlebury. "And I'm certainly mighty grateful

to you, Mr. Foxman, for this chance."

"Never mind that," said Mr. Foxman. "I'm not picking you for this job

because I like the colour of your hair, or because I'm taken by the cut

of your clothes. I'm picking you because I think you can swing it. Now,

then, go to it!"

Singlebury went to it. With all his reporter's heart and all his

reporter's soul and, most of all, with all his reporter's nose he went

to it. Tucked away in a corner of the evening edition's art room,

deserted now and dark except for the circle of radiance where he sat

beneath an electric bulb, he read and reread the scissorings entrusted

to him by Mr. Foxman, until his mind was saturated with the subject,

holding in solution a mass of information pertaining to the past

activities of the Pearl Street trolley line and of John W. Blake,

freebooter of big business; and of Ezra Pratt, class leader and

financier; and of S. P. Bogardus, statesman and legislative agent.

It was nearly midnight before he restored each group of clippings to its

proper envelope and took the envelopes to a grated window behind the

library and handed them in to a youth on duty there. First, though, he

took time, sitting there in the empty art room, to write a short, joyous

letter to a certain person in San Jose, California, telling her the big

chance had come to him very much sooner than he had expected, and that

if he made good on it--as he had every intention of doing--they might

not, after all, have to wait so very long for that marriage license and

that wedding and that little flat here in little old New York. Then he

went uptown to the Godey Arms Hotel, where his dreams that night were

such dreams as an ambitious young man very much in love with two

sweethearts--one a profession and the other a girl--might be expected to

dream under such circumstances.

Next morning, at the Wampum Club, he saw Bogardus, a grey-haired, rotund

man, and Pratt, an elderly gentleman, with a smile as oily as a fish

duck's apprehending minnows, and a manner as gentle as a fox's stalking

a hen-roost. From these two he extracted all that he had expected to get

and more besides. Indeed, he had but to hold out his hands and together

they shook fruity facts and fruitier figures down upon him in a shower.

Until nearly two o'clock they kept him with them. He had just time to

snatch a hurried bite at a dairy lunch, board a subway express at the

Grand Central, and be at the offices of Myrowitz, Godfrey, Godfrey &

Murtha at three o'clock. A sign painter was altering the firm's name on

the outer door of the firm's reception room, his aim plainly being to

shorten it by the elimination of the Murtha part of it. On beyond the

door the gentleman who thus was being eliminated received Singlebury in

a private room and gave him nearly two hours of his valuable time.

From what Mr. Foxman had said Singlebury rather expected Mr. Murtha, at

the outset, might be reluctant to furnish the coupling links between the

legal chicanery and the financial skullduggery which would make this

projected merger a conspicuous scandal in a district of conspicuous

industrial scandals; had rather expected Mr. Murtha's mind might require

crafty sounding and skillful pumping. Here Singlebury was agreeably

surprised, for, it being first understood that Mr. Murtha's name was

nowhere to appear in what Singlebury might write, Mr. Murtha proved to

be as frank as frank could be. Indeed, when it came to a disclosure of

the rôles played by two of his associates, from whom now he was parting,

Mr. Murtha, the retiring member of this well-known house of corporation

law, betrayed an almost brutal frankness. They, doubtlessly, would have

called it rank professional treachery--base, personal ingratitude and a

violation of all the ethics of their highly ethical calling.

Mr. Murtha, looking at things through very different glasses, put it on

the high ground of his duty, as a citizen and a taxpayer, to the general

health and the general morality of the general public. It is this same

difference of opinion which makes neighbourhood quarrels, lawsuits and

wars between nations popular in the most civilised climes.

In all essential details, the tale, when Murtha was through with

Singlebury and Singlebury was through with Murtha, stood completed and

connected, jointed and doubt-proof. That second evening Singlebury spent

in his room, arranging his data in their proper sequence and mapping out

in his head his introduction. Next day, all day, he wrote his story.

Just before dusk he drew the last page out of his typewriter and

corrected it. The job was done and it was a good job. It ran four

columns and over. It stripped that traffic grab to its bare and grinning

bones. It was loaded with bombshells for the proposed merger and with

the shrapnel of certain criminal prosecution for the men behind that

merger, and most of all for John W. Blake, the man behind those other

and lesser men.

To Singlebury, though, it was even more than this. To him it was a good

story, well written, well balanced, happily adjusted, smartly phrased;

and on top of this, it was the most precious jewel of a reporter's

treasure casket. It was a cracking, smashing, earth-shaking,

exclusive--scoop, as they would have called it out yonder on the Coast

where he came from--beat, as they would call it here in New York.

Personally, as per instructions, he put the finished manuscript into the

hands of Mr. Foxman, in Mr. Foxman's office, then stood by while Mr.

Foxman ran through the opening paragraphs.

"Singlebury," said Mr. Foxman, laying the sheets down, "this looks to me

like a good piece of work. I like your beginning, anyhow. The first ten

lines ought to blow that bunch of pirates clean out of water." He

glanced keenly at the drooping figure of the other. "Kind of played out,

aren't you?"

"A little," confessed the reporter. "Now that it's over, I do feel a bit

let down."

"I'll bet you do," said Mr. Foxman. "Well, you'd better run along to

your hotel and get a good night's rest. Take to-morrow off too--don't

report here until day after to-morrow; that'll be Friday, won't it? All

right then, I'll see you Friday afternoon here; I may have something of

interest to say to you then. Meanwhile, as I told you before, keep your

mouth shut to everybody. I don't know yet whether I'll want to run your

story to-morrow morning or the morning after. My information is that

Blake, through his lawyers, will announce the completion of the merger,

probably on Friday, or possibly on Saturday. I may decide to hold off

the explosion until they come out with their announcement. Really, that

would be the suitable moment to open fire on 'em and smash up their

little stock-market game for them."

* * * * *

Dog-tired and happier than any poor dog of a newspaper man has a right

to be, Singlebury went to his room and to bed. And when finally he fell

asleep he dreamed the second chapter of that orange-blossomy dream of

his.

Being left to himself, Mr. Foxman read Singlebury's copy through page by

page, changing words here and there, but on the whole enormously pleased

with it. Then he touched a buzzer button under his desk, being minded to

call into conference the chief editorial writer and the news editor

before he put the narrative into type. Now it happened that at this

precise moment Mr. Foxman's own special boy had left his post just

outside Mr. Foxman's door to skylark with a couple of ordinary copy boys

in the corridor between the city room and the Sunday room, and so he

didn't answer the summons immediately. The fact was, he didn't hear the

bell until Mr. Foxman impatiently rang a second and a third time. Then

he came running, making up a suitable excuse to explain his tardiness as

he came. And during that half minute of delay there leaped out of

nowhere into Mr. Foxman's brain an idea--an idea, horned, hoofed and

hairy--which was to alter the current of his own life and, directly or

indirectly, the lives of scores of others.

* * * * *

It would seem I was a trifle premature, back yonder near the beginning

of this chapter, when I used the line: Six-thirty-four--enter the

villain.

Because, as I now realise, the villain didn't enter then. The villain

did not enter until this moment, more than forty-eight hours later,

entering not in the guise of a human being but in the shape of this

tufted, woolly demon of a notion which took such sudden lodgment in Mr.

Foxman's mind. Really, I suppose we should blame the office boy. His

being late may have been responsible for the whole thing.

He poked a tow head in at the door, ready to take a scolding.

"D'yer ring, sir?" he inquired meekly.

"Yes, three times," said Mr. Foxman. "Where have you been?"

"Right here, sir. Somethin' you wanted, sir?"

"No; I've changed my mind. Get out!"

Pleased and surprised to have escaped, the towhead withdrew. Very

deliberately Mr. Foxman lit a cigar, leaned back in his chair, and for a

period took mental accounting of his past, his present and his future;

and all the while he did this a decision was being forged for him, by

that busy devilish little tempter, into shape and point and permanency.

In his fingers he held the means of making himself independent--yes,

even rich. Why--he began asking himself the plaguing question and kept

on asking it--why should he go on working his life out for twelve

thousand dollars a year when, by one safe, secret stroke, he could make

twelve times twelve thousand, or very possibly more? He knew what

happened to newspaper executives who wore out in the harness. Offhand,

he could think of half a dozen who had been as capable as he was, as

active and as zealous, and as single-purposed in their loyalty to the

sheets they served as he was to this sheet which he served.

All of these men had held high editorial posts and, in their prime, had

drawn down big salaries, as newspaper salaries go. Where were they now,

since they had grown old? He knew where they were--mighty good and well

he knew. One trying to run a chicken farm on Staten Island and daily

demonstrating that a man who could manage a newspaper does not

necessarily know how to manage a flock of temperamental White Leghorn

hens; one an exchange editor, a neglected and unconsidered figure of

obscurity, a nonentity almost, and a pensioner, practically, in the same

shop whose affairs his slackened old hands had once controlled; one or

two more of them actually needy--out of work and out at elbows; and so

on, and so forth, through the list.

Well, it rested with Mr. Foxman to avert such a finish to his own

career; the instrument fitted to combat the prospect was here in his

grasp. Temptation, whispering to him, bade him use it--told him he would

be a sorry fool not to use it. What was that line about Opportunity's

knocking once at every man's door? And what was that other line about

there being a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood,

leads on to fortune?

After all, it meant only that he break faith with five men:--with his

employer, General Lignum, who trusted him; with his underling,

Singlebury, who had done a good job of work for him; and with three

others whom, for the sake of convenience, he mentally grouped

together--Bogardus and Pratt and Murtha, the lawyer. These three he

eliminated from the equation in one puff of blue cigar smoke. For they

were all three of them crooks and plotters and double dealers, masters

of the dirty trick and the dirty device, who conspired together to serve

not the general good, but their own squalid and contemptible ends.

For General Lignum he had more heed. Perhaps I should say here that

until this hour this man, Hobart Foxman, had been an honest man--not

just reasonably honest but absolutely honest, a man foursquare as a

smokehouse. Never before had it occurred to him to figure up to see

whether honesty really paid. He did some brisk figuring now.

After all, did it pay? As a reporter, back yonder in the old days when

he, a raw cub, first broke into this wearing, grinding newspaper game,

he had despised fakers and faking and the petty grafting, the cheap

sponging to which he saw some reporters--not many, perhaps, but

some--descending. As an assistant sporting editor, after his first

promotion from the ranks, he had been content to live upon his somewhat

meagre salary, refusing to fatten his income by taking secret pay from

prize-fight promoters wishful of getting advertisements dressed up as

news stories into the columns of the sporting page. As a staff

correspondent, first at Albany and then at Washington, he had walked

wide of the lobbyists who sought to corrupt and succeeded in corrupting

certain correspondents, and by corrupting them were able sometimes to

colour the news, sometimes to suppress it. Always the dispatches he

signed had been unbiased, fair, above the board.

To be sure, Foxman had played office politics the while he went up, peg

by peg. To men above him he had been the assiduous courtier, crooking

the pregnant knee before those who might help him onward. But, then,

that was a part of the game--office politics was. Even so, playing it to

the top of his bent, he had been on the level. And what had being on the

level brought him? It had brought him a place of executive authority and

a salary of twelve thousand a year. And these two things--the place and

the twelve thousand--he would continue to have and to hold and to enjoy

for just so long as he was strong enough to fight off ambitious younger

men, climbing up from below as he had climbed; or, worse luck, for just

so long as he continued to please the mercurial millionaire who two

years earlier, at public outcry, had bought _The Clarion_, lock, stock

and barrel, with its good will and fixtures--just as a man might buy a

cow with its calf in the drover's pen.

That brought him round again to a consideration of General Lignum.

Metaphysically he undressed the general and considered him naked. He

turned him about and looked at him on every side. The result was not

flattering to that impressive and dignified gentleman. Was General

Lignum so deserving of consideration? What had General Lignum ever done

in all his luxurious days to justify him to a place in the sun? Lignum

never worked for his millions; he inherited them. When Lignum bought

_The Clarion_, then as now a losing property, he had been actuated by

the same whim which makes a spoiled child crave the costliest toy in the

toy shop and, like that spoiled child, he would cast it aside, unmindful

of its future, in the same hour that he tired of his newest possession

and of the cost of its upkeep.

Wasn't Lignum lavishing wads of his easy-come, easy-go money on it now,

because of his ambition to be a United States senator? Most certainly he

was--for that and nothing else. Barring his wealth, which was a gift to

him, and his newspaper, which was a plaything, what qualified this

dilettante to sit in the seats of the mighty? What did Lignum know of

the toil and the sweat and the gifts spent by men, whose names to him

were merely items in a pay roll, to make _The Clarion_ a power in the

community and in the country? What did he care? In the last analysis

what anyhow was this General Robert Bruce Lignum except a bundle of

pampered selfishness, wrapped up in a membrane, inclosed in a frock coat

and lidded under a high hat? When he got that far Mr. Foxman decided he

owed Lignum nothing, as compared with what Lignum owed him. Well, here

was a chance to collect the debt, with back dividends and interest

accrued. He would collect. He would make himself independent of the

whims of Lignum, of the necessity of daily labour, of the uncertainties

of his position, of the certainty of the oncoming of age when his hand

must tire and his wits grow blunted.

This left to be disposed of--only Singlebury. And Singlebury, in Mr.

Foxman's mind, was now become the least of the factors concerned. In

this, his new scheme of things that had sprung full-grown from the loins

of a great and a sudden desire, a Singlebury more or less mattered not a

whit. In the same moment that he decided to discard Singlebury the means

of discarding Singlebury came to him.

That inspiration clarified the situation tremendously, interlocking one

part of his plan with the others. In any event the lips of Pratt,

Bogardus and Murtha were closed, and their hands tied. By now Lignum was

at least a thousand miles out at sea. In the working out of his scheme

Foxman would be safe from the meddlings and muddlings of Old Lignum.

Already he had begun to think of that gentleman as Old Lignum instead of

as General Lignum, so fast were his mental aspects and attitudes

altering. Finally, with Singlebury out of the way, the plot would stand

up, a completed and almost a perfect edifice.

However, there was one contingency to be dared. In a way it was a risk,

yet an inevitable one. No matter what followed he must put the exposé

story into print; that absolutely was requisite to the proper

development of the plan. For Mr. Foxman well knew the psychological

effect of the sight of cold type upon the minds of men planning evil

things. He didn't know John W. Blake personally, but he knew John W.

Blake's kind, and he figured John W. Blake as being in his essentials no

different from the run of his kind. Nor was he wrong there, as will

appear. Moreover, the risk, while necessary to the carrying out of his

present designs, was a risk only in the light of possibilities arising

later. Being now fully committed to the venture, he told himself he

shouldn't much care if detection did come after the accomplishment of

his purpose. Long before that could happen, he, having made his pile and

being secure in the possession of a fortune, would be able to laugh in

the faces of his own little world, because anyhow he meant to move on

into another circle very soon thereafter. Yes; there was one risk to be

taken. On the instant that he arrived at this point in his reasonings

he set about taking it.

First off, he read Singlebury's copy through once more, amending the

wording in a few places. He made certain accusations direct and forcible

where the reporter, in his carefulness, had been a trifle vague. Then he

drew to him a block of copy paper and set about heading and subheading

the story. In the days when he sat in the slot of a copy desk Mr. Foxman

had been a master hand at headlining; with disuse his knack of hand had

not grown rusty. He built and balanced a three-column, three-decker top

caption and, to go under it, the heavy hanging indentions and the bold

cross lines. From the body of the manuscript, also, he copied off

several assertions of a particular emphasis and potency and marked them

to go at the top of the story in blackface, with a box about them. This

much done, he went to his door and hailed the night city editor, sitting

a few yards away.

"Oh, Sloan," he said, "send a boy upstairs for McManus, will you?"

"McManus isn't here to-night," answered Sloan. He got up and came over

to his chief. McManus was the make-up editor.

"This isn't McManus' night off, is it?" asked Mr. Foxman.

"No, Mac's sick," explained Sloan; "he was complaining last night and

went home early, and I stayed on to make up his last two pages for him.

A little while ago his wife telephoned in from Bayside that he was in

bed with a high fever. She said the doctor said it was a touch of

malaria and that Mac couldn't possibly get back to work for a week,

anyhow."

"I see," said Mr. Foxman slowly. He ran his eye over the city room.

"Whom did you put on in his place?"

"Gykeman."

"Gykeman, eh?" Mr. Foxman considered a moment. This news of McManus'

indisposition pleased him. It showed how willing was Fate to keep on

dealing him the winning cards. But Gykeman wasn't his choice for the

task he had in mind; that called for someone of a less inquiring, less

curious mind than Gykeman owned. Again his eye ranged the city room. It

fell on a swollen and dissipated face, purplish under the electric

lights.

"I believe you'd better bring Gykeman back downstairs," he said, "I want

him to read copy on that Wilder poisoning case that's going to trial

to-morrow in General Sessions. Let's see." He went through the pretense

of canvassing the available material in sight. Then:

"Hemburg will do. Put Hemburg on make-up until Mac is well again."

"Hemburg?" The city editor's eyebrows arched in surprise. "I thought you

didn't think very highly of Hemburg, Mr. Foxman."

"Hemburg's all right," said Mr. Foxman crisply; "it's his personal

habits I don't fancy very much. Still, with half a load on Hemburg is

capable enough--and I never saw him with less than half a load on. He

can handle the make-up; he used to be make-up man years ago on the old

_Star-Ledger_, it seems to me. Put him on instead of Gykeman--no, never

mind; send him in here to me. I'll tell him myself and give him some

good advice at the same time."

"Well, just as you think best," said Sloan, miffed that his own

selection should have been rejected, but schooled to an unquestioning

obedience by the seemingly slack--but really rigorous--discipline of

a newspaper shop. "I'll send him right in."

Two minutes later Hemburg was standing in an attitude of attention

alongside Mr. Foxman's desk, and from his chair Mr. Foxman was looking

up at him steadily.

"Hemburg," he stated, "I can't say that I've been altogether pleased

with you here of late."

Hemburg put up a splotched, tremulous hand, to hide a weak mouth, and

spoke in his own defence from between his fingers.

"Well, I'm sorry if anything has gone wrong, Mr. Foxman," he began; "I

try----"

"I don't mean there's any particular complaint," stated Mr. Foxman,

"only it struck me you've been getting into a rut lately. Or that you've

been going stale--let's put it that way. On my own judgment I've given

orders that you are to go on make-up temporarily, beginning to-night.

It's up to you to make good there. If you do make good, when McManus

comes back I'll look round and see if there isn't something better than

a forty-dollar-a-week copy-reading job for you in this office."

"I'm--I'm certainly obliged to you, Mr. Foxman," stuttered Hemburg. "I

guess maybe I was getting logy. A fellow certainly does get in a groove

out there on that copy desk," he added with the instinct of the

inebriate to put the blame for his shortcomings on anything rather than

on the real cause of those shortcomings.

"Perhaps so," said Mr. Foxman; "let's see if making a change won't work

a cure. Do you see this?" and he put his hand on the sheaf of

Singlebury's copy lying on his desk, under the captions he himself had

done. "Well, this may turn out to be the biggest beat and the most

important story that we've put over in a year. It's all ready to go to

the type-setting machines--I just finished reading copy on it myself.

But if it leaks out--if a single word about this story gets out of this

building before we're ready to turn it loose on the street--the man

responsible for that leak is going to lose his job no matter who or what

he is. Understand?

"Now, then, excepting you and me and the man who wrote it, nobody

employed inside this building knows there is such a story. I want you to

take it upstairs with you now. Don't let 'em cut it up into regular

takes for the machines. Tell the composing-room foreman--it'll be

Riordan, I guess--that he's to take his two best machine operators off

of whatever they're doing and put 'em to work setting this story up, and

nothing else. Those two men are to keep right at it until it's done. I

want a good, safe-mouthed man to set the head. I want the fastest

proofreader up there, whoever that may be, to read the galley proofs,

holding copy on it himself. Impress it on Riordan to tell the

proofreader, the head setter and the two machine men that they are not

to gab to anyone about what they're doing. When the story is corrected

I want you to put it inside a chase with a hold-for-release line on it,

and cover it up with print paper, sealed and pasted on, and roll it

aside. We've already got one hold-for-release yarn in type upstairs;

it's a Washington dispatch dealing with the Mexican situation. Better

put the two stories close together somewhere out of the way. Riordan

will know where to hide them. Then you bring a set of clean proofs of

this story down here to me--to-night. I'll wait right here for you.

"I'd like to run the thing to-morrow morning, leading with two columns

on the front page and a two-column turnover on page two. But I can't.

There's just one point to be cleared up before it'll be safe to print

it. I expect to clear up that point myself to-morrow. Then if everything

is all right I'll let you know and we'll probably go to the bat with

the story Friday morning; that'll be day after to-morrow. If it should

turn out that we can't use it I want you to dump the whole thing, head

and all, and melt up the lead and forget that such a story ever passed

through your hands. Because if it is safe--if we have got all our facts

on straight--it'll be a great beat. But if we haven't it'll be about the

most dangerous chunk of potential libel that we could have knocking

about that composing room. Do you get the point?"

Hemburg said he got it. His instructions were unusual; but, then, from

Mr. Foxman's words and manner, he realised that the story must be a most

unusual one too. He carried out the injunctions that had been put upon

him, literally and painstakingly. And while so engaged he solemnly

pledged himself never again to touch another drop of rum so long as he

lived. He had made the same promise a hundred times before. But this

time was different--this time he meant it. He was tired of being a hack

and a drudge. This was a real opportunity which Mr. Foxman had thrown in

his way. It opened up a vista of advancement and betterment before him.

He would be a fool not to make the most of it, and a bigger fool still

ever to drink again.

Oh, but he meant it! It would be the straight and narrow path for him

hereafter; the good old water-wagon for his, world without end, amen.

Noticeably more tremulous as to his fingers and his lips, but borne up

with his high resolve, he put the clean proofs of the completed story

into Mr. Foxman's hands about midnight, and then hurried back upstairs

to shape the layout for the first mail edition.

As Mr. Foxman read the proofs through he smiled under his moustache, and

it was not a particularly pleasant smile, either. Printer's ink gave to

Singlebury's masterpiece a sinister emphasis it had lacked in the

typewritten copy; it made it more forceful and more forcible. Its

allegations stuck out from the column-wide lines like naked lance tips.

And in the top deck of the flaring scare head the name of John W. Blake

stood forth in heavy black letters to catch the eye and focus the

attention. Mr. Foxman rolled up the proof sheets, bestowed them

carefully in the inside breast pocket of his coat, and shortly

thereafter went home and to bed.

But not to sleep. Pleasing thoughts, all trimmed up with dollar marks,

ran through his head, chasing away drowsiness. All the same he was up at

eight o'clock that morning--two hours ahead of his usual rising time.

Mrs. Foxman was away paying a visit to her people up-state--another

fortunate thing. He breakfasted alone and, as he sipped his coffee, he

glanced about him with a sudden contempt for the simple furnishings of

his dining room. Well, there was some consolation--this time next year,

if things went well, he wouldn't be slaving his life out for an

unappreciative taskmaster, and he wouldn't be living in this cheap,

twelve-hundred-dollar-a-year flat, either. His conscience did not

trouble him; from the moment the big notion came to him it had not.

Greed had drugged it to death practically instantaneously.

No lees of remorse, no dreggy and bitterish reflections, touching upon

the treachery he contemplated and the disloyalty to which he had

committed himself, bothered him through that busy day. In his brain was

no room for such things, but only for a high cheerfulness and

exaltation. To be sure, he was counting his chickens before they were

hatched, but the eggs were laid, and he didn't see how they could

possibly addle between now and the tallying time of achieved incubation.

So, with him in this frame of mind, the day started. And it was a busy

day.

His first errand was to visit the safety-deposit vaults of a bank on

lower Broadway. In a box here, in good stable securities of a total

value of about sixteen thousand dollars, he had the bulk of his savings.

He got them out and took them upstairs, and on a demand note the

president of the bank loaned him twelve thousand dollars, taking Mr.

Foxman's stocks and bonds as collateral. In the bank he had as a

checking account a deposit somewhat in excess of two thousand dollars.

Lying to Mrs. Foxman's credit was the sum of exactly ten thousand

dollars, a legacy from an aunt recently dead, for which as yet Mrs.

Foxman and her husband had found no desirable form of investment.

Fortunately he held her power of attorney. He transferred the ten

thousand from her name to his, which, with what he had just borrowed and

what he himself had on deposit, gave him an available working capital of

a trifle above twenty-four thousand dollars. He wrote a check payable to

bearer for the whole stake and had it certified, and then, tucking it

away in his pocket, he went round the corner into Broad Street to call

upon John W. Blake at the Blake Bank. The supreme moment toward which he

had been advancing was at hand.

As a man of multifarious and varied interests, and all of them

important, Mr. Blake was a reasonably busy man. Before now ordinary

newspaper men had found it extremely hard to see Mr. Blake. But Mr.

Foxman was no ordinary newspaper man; he was the managing editor of _The

Clarion_, a paper of standing and influence, even if it didn't happen to

be a money-maker at present. Across a marble-pillared, brass-grilled

barrier Mr. Foxman sent in his card to Mr. Blake and, with the card, the

word that Mr. Foxman desired to see Mr. Blake upon pressing and

immediate business. He was not kept waiting for long. An office boy

turned him over to a clerk and the clerk in turn turned him over to a

secretary, and presently, having been ushered through two outer rooms,

Mr. Foxman, quite at his ease, was sitting in Mr. Blake's private

office, while Mr. Blake read through the galley proofs of Singlebury's

story to which the caller had invited his attention.

The gentleman's face, as he read on, gave no index to the feelings of

the gentleman. Anyhow, Mr. Blake's face was more of a manifest than an

index; its expression summed up conclusions rather than surmises. As a

veteran player--and a highly successful one--in the biggest and most

chancy game in the world, Mr. Blake was fortunate in having what lesser

gamesters call a poker face. Betraying neither surprise, chagrin nor

indignation, he read the article through to the last paragraph of the

last column. Then carefully he put the crumpled sheets down on his big

desk, leaned back in his chair, made a wedge of his two hands by

matching finger tip to finger tip, aimed the point of the wedge directly

at Mr. Foxman, and looked with a steadfast eye at his visitor. His

visitor looked back at him quite as steadily, and for a moment or two

nothing was said.

"Well, Mr. Foxman?" remarked Mr. Blake at length. There was a mild

speculation in his inflection--nothing more.

"Well, Mr. Blake?" replied the other in the same casual tone.

"I suppose we needn't waste any time sparring about," said Mr. Blake. "I

gather that your idea is to publish this--this attack, in your paper?"

"That, Mr. Blake, is exactly my idea, unless"--and for just a moment Mr.

Foxman paused--"unless something should transpire to cause me to change

my mind."

"I believe you told me when you came in that at this moment you are in

absolute control of the columns and the policy of _The Clarion_?"

"I am--absolutely."

"And might it be proper for me to ask when you contemplate printing this

article--in what issue?" Mr. Blake was very polite, but no more so than

Mr. Foxman. Each was taking the cue for his pose from the other.

"It is a perfectly proper question, Mr. Blake," said Mr. Foxman. "I may

decide to print it day after to-morrow morning. In the event of certain

contingencies I might print it to-morrow morning, and again on the other

hand"--once more he spoke with deliberate slowness--"I might see my way

clear to suppressing it altogether. It all depends, Mr. Blake."

"Did it ever occur to you that with this warning which you have so

kindly given me, I have ample opportunity to enjoin you in the courts

from printing all or any part of this article on to-morrow or any

subsequent day?"

"You are at perfect liberty to try to enjoin us, Mr. Blake. But did it

ever occur to you that such a step wouldn't help your case in the

least? Go ahead and enjoin, Mr. Blake, if you care to, and see what

would happen to you in the matter of--well, let us say, undesirable

publicity. Instead of one paper printing these facts--for they are

facts, Mr. Blake--you would have all the papers printing them in one

shape or another."

"Without arguing that point further just now, might I be allowed to

mention that I fail to understand your motive in coming to me, Mr.

Foxman, at this time?" said the banker.

"Mr. Blake," said Mr. Foxman, contemplating the tip of his cigar, "I'll

give you two guesses as to my motive, and your first guess will be the

correct one."

"I see," stated the other meditatively, almost gently. Then, still with

no evidences of heat or annoyance: "Mr. Foxman, there is a reasonably

short and rather ugly word to describe what you are driving at. Here in

this part of town we call it blackmail."

"Mr. Blake," answered the editor evenly, "there is a much shorter and

even uglier word which describes your intentions. You will find that

word in the second--or possibly it is the third--line of the first

paragraph of the matter you have just been reading. The word is

'steal.'"

"Possibly you are right, Mr. Foxman," said Mr. Blake dryly. He drew the

proof sheets to him, adjusted his glasses and looked at the topmost

sheet. "Yes, you are right, Mr. Foxman--I mean about the word in

question. It appears in the second line." He shoved the proofs aside.

"It would appear you are a reasonable man--with a business instinct. I

flatter myself that I am reasonable and I have been in business a good

many years. Now, then, since we appear to be on the point of thoroughly

understanding each other, may I ask you another question?"

"You may."

"What is your price for continuing to be--ahem--reasonable?"

"I can state it briefly, Mr. Blake. Being a newspaper man, I am not a

wealthy man. I have an ambition to become wealthy. I look to you to aid

me in the accomplishment of that desire. You stand in a fair way to make

a great deal of money, though you already have a great deal. I stand in

the position not only of being able to prevent you from making that

money, but of being able to make a great deal of trouble for you,

besides. Or, looking at the other side of the proposition, I have the

power to permit you to go ahead with your plans. Whether or not I

exercise that power rests entirely with you. Is that quite plain?"

"Very. Pray proceed, Mr. Foxman. You were going to say----"

"I was going to say that since you hope to make a great deal of money I

wish by cooperation with you, as it were, to make for myself a sum which

I regard as ample for my present needs."

"And by ample--you mean what?"

"I mean this: You are to carry me with your brokers for ten thousand

shares of the common stock of the Pearl Street trolley line on a

ten-point margin. The account may be opened in the name of Mr. X; I, of

course, being Mr. X. I apprehend that the party known as X will see his

way clear to closing out the account very shortly after the formal

announcement of your plans for the East Side transit merger--certainly

within a few days. If there should be any losses you will stand them up

to and including the ten-point margin. If there should be any profits

they go, of course, to Mr. X. I do not anticipate that there will be any

losses, and I do anticipate that there will be some profits. In payment

for this friendly accommodation on your part, I for my part will engage

to prevent the publication in _The Clarion_, or elsewhere, of the

statements contained in those proofs and now standing in type in our

composing room, subject to my order to print the story forthwith, or to

withhold it, or to kill it outright."

"Anything else, Mr. Foxman?" inquired Mr. Blake blandly.

"Yes, one other thing: You are to give the necessary order now, in my

presence, over the telephone to your brokers. After that you are to go

with me to their offices to complete the transaction and to identify me

properly as the Mr. X who is to be the owner of this particular

account; also you are to explain to them that thereafter the account is

subject to my orders and mine alone. I think that will be sufficient."

"It would seem, Mr. Foxman, that you do not trust me to deal fairly with

you in this matter?"

"I do not have to trust you, Mr. Blake. And so I choose not to."

"Exactly. And what guaranty have I that you will do your part?"

"Only my word, Mr. Blake. You will observe now that the shoe is on the

other foot. I do not have to trust you--whereas you do have to trust me.

But if you need any guaranty other than the thought of where my

self-interest lies in the matter I may tell you that in addition to the

stocks which you are to carry for me I intend to invest in Pearl Street

common to the full extent of my available cash resources, also on a

ten-point margin. Here is the best proof of that." He hauled out his

certified check for twenty-four thousand and some odd dollars and handed

it over to Mr. Blake.

Mr. Blake barely glanced at it and handed it back, at the same time

reaching for his desk telephone.

"Mr. Foxman," he said, "there may be some pain but there is also

considerable pleasure to me in dealing with a reasonable man. I see that

your mind is made up. Why then should we quibble? You win, Mr.

Foxman--you win in a walk. Whatever opinions I may entertain as to your

private character and whatever opinions you may entertain as to my

private character, I may at least venture to congratulate you upon your

intelligence. ... Oh, yes, while I think of it, there is one other thing,

Mr. Foxman: I don't suppose you would care to tell me just how you came

into possession of the information contained in your article?"

"I would not."

"I thought as much. Excuse me one moment, if you please." And with that

Mr. Blake, still wearing his poker face, joggled the lever of the

telephone.

* * * * *

What with certain negotiations, privately conducted and satisfactorily

concluded at the brokers', Mr. Foxman was engaged until well on into the

afternoon. This being done, he walked across to the front of the stock

exchange, where he found a rank of taxis waiting in line for fares when

the market should close. The long, lean months of depression had passed

and the broker gentry did not patronise the subway these days. Daily at

three o'clock, being awearied by much shearing of woolly, fat sheep,

they rode uptown in taxicabs, utterly regardless of mounting motor

tariffs and very often giving fat tips to their motor drivers besides.

But it is safe to say no broker, however sure he might be of the return

of national confidence, gave a fatter tip that day than the one which

Mr. Foxman handed to the taxicab driver who conveyed him to his club, in

the Upper Forties. Mr. Foxman was in a mood to be prodigal with his

small change.

Ordinarily he would have spent an hour or two of the afternoon and all

of the evening until midnight or later at _The Clarion_ office. But on

this particular day he didn't go there at all. Somehow, he felt those

familiar surroundings, wherein he had worked his way to the topmost peg

of authority, and incidentally to the confidence of his employer and his

staff, might be to him distastefully reminiscent of former times. Mind

you, he had no shame for the thing he had done and was doing; but

instead had only a great and splendid exhilaration. Still, he was just

as comfortable in his own mind, staying away from that office. It could

get along without him for this once. It might as well get used to the

sensation anyway; for very shortly, as he figured the prospect, it would

have to get along without him.

At his club he ate a belated luncheon and to kill the time played

billiards with two other men, playing with his accustomed skill and with

a fine show of spirits. Billiards killed the time for him until

seven-thirty, which exactly suited his purpose, because at seven-thirty

the acting make-up editor should be reporting for duty down at _The

Clarion_ shop.

Mr. Foxman entered a sound-proof booth in the little corridor that

opened off the main-entry hall of the club and, after calling up the

night desk and notifying Sloan he would not come to the office at all

that night, asked Sloan to send Hemburg to the telephone.

"Is that you, Hemburg?" he was saying, half a minute later. "Listen,

Hemburg, this is very important: You remember that story I turned over

to you last night? ... Yes, that's the same one--the story I told you we

would run, provided I could establish one main point. Well, I couldn't

establish that point--we can't prove up on our principal allegation.

That makes it dangerous to have the thing even standing in type. So you

go upstairs and kill it--kill it yourself with your own hands, I mean. I

don't want to take any chances on a slip-up. Dump the type and have it

melted up. And, Hemburg--say nothing to anyone about either the story

itself or what has happened to it. Understand me? ... Good. And, Hemburg,

here's another thing: You recall the other story that I told you was

being held for release--the one on the Mexican situation? It's got a

Washington date line over it. Well, shove it in to-night as your leading

news feature. If we hold it much longer it's liable to get stale--the

way things are breaking down there in Mexico. All right; good-bye!"

He had rung off and hung up and was coming out of the little booth when

a fresh inspiration came to him and he stepped back in again. One factor

remained to be eliminated--Singlebury. Until that moment Mr. Foxman had

meant to sacrifice Singlebury by the simple expedient of sending him

next day on an out-of-town assignment--over into New Jersey, or up into

New England perhaps--and then firing him by wire, out of hand, for some

alleged reportorial crime, either of omission or of commission. It would

be easy enough to cook up the pretext, and from his chief's summary

dismissal of him Singlebury would have no appeal. But suppose Singlebury

came back to town, as almost surely he would, and suppose he came filled

with a natural indignation at having been discharged in such fashion,

and suppose, about the same time, he fell to wondering why his great

story on the Pearl Street trolley steal had not been printed--certainly

Singlebury had sense enough to put two and two together--and suppose on

top of that he went gabbling his suspicions about among the born gossips

of Park Row? It might be awkward.

These were the thoughts that jumped into Mr. Foxman's mind as he stepped

out of the booth, and in the same instant, while he was stepping back in

again, he had the answer for the puzzle. Since he meant to make a burnt

offering of Singlebury, why not cook him to a cinder and be done with

it, and be done with Singlebury too? A method of doing this was the

inspiration that came on the threshold of the telephone booth; and when

immediately he undertook to put the trick into effect he found it, in

its preliminary stages, working with that same satisfactory promise of

fulfillment that had marked all his other undertakings, shaping into the

main undertaking.

For example, when he called up the Godey Arms Hotel and asked for Mr.

Singlebury, which was the thing he next did, the telephone operator of

the hotel exchange told him Mr. Singlebury had gone out for the evening,

leaving word behind that he would be back at midnight. Now that exactly

suited Mr. Foxman. Had Singlebury been in he had meant, on the pretext

of desiring to question him later upon some trivial point in the big

story, to have Singlebury be at some appointed telephone rendezvous

shortly after midnight. But he knew now with reasonable certainty where

Singlebury would be during that hour. This knowledge simplified matters

considerably; it saved him from the bother of setting the stage so

elaborately. Without giving his name to the young woman at the hotel

switchboard he asked her to tell Singlebury, upon his return, that a

gentleman would call him up on business of importance some time between

twelve and one o'clock. She said she would remember the message and,

thanking her, he rang off. Well content, he went to a theatre where a

farce was playing, sat through the performance and, going back again to

his club after the performance, had a late supper in the grill.

At twelve-forty-five he finished his coffee. Entering the telephone

booth he got first the Godey Arms upon the wire, and then, after a

moment, the waiting and expectant Singlebury. In his mind all evening

Mr. Foxman had been carefully rehearsing just what he would say and just

how he would say it. Into his voice he put exactly the right strain of

hurried, sharp anxiety as he snapped:

"Is that you, Singlebury?"

"Yes, it's Singlebury," came back the answer. "That's you, Mr. Foxman,

isn't it? I rather imagined it would be you from what----"

Mr. Foxman broke in on him.

"Singlebury, there's hell to pay about that story you wrote for me.

Somebody talked--there was a leak somewhere."

"On my word of honour, Mr. Foxman," said the jostled Singlebury, "it

wasn't I. I obeyed your orders to the letter and----"

"I haven't time now to try to find out who gabbled," snapped back Mr.

Foxman; "there are things more important to consider. About half-past

seven to-night--that was when I first tried to reach you from down here

at the office--I got wind that Blake's crowd had found out about our

surprise and were getting busy. That was what I'd been afraid of, as

I told you. In the fear that they might try to enjoin us if we held

off publication any longer I gave orders to slam the story into the

early-mail edition that went to press twenty minutes ago. And now--now

when the mischief is done--when thousands of papers are already

printed--I find out that we've committed criminal libel, and the worst

kind of criminal libel--not against Blake--we are safe enough there--but

against Eli Godfrey, Senior, one of the biggest lawyers in this town.

In your story you accused him of being one of the lawyers who helped to

frame this deal. That's what you did!"

"Yes--but--why--but"--stammered Singlebury--"but, Mr. Foxman, Eli

Godfrey, Senior, was the man. He was--wasn't he? All my information

was----"

"It was his son, Eli Godfrey, Junior, his partner in the firm," declared

Mr. Foxman, lying beautifully and convincingly. "That's who it was. The

father had nothing to do with it; the son everything. You got the whole

thing twisted. I've snatched the forms back and I'm throwing the story

out of the second edition and filling the hole with a Washington story

that we happened to have handy. So your story probably won't be in the

edition that you will see. But that doesn't help much--if any. We've

kept the libel out of our local circulation, but it's already in the

early mails and we can't catch up with it or stop it there. It's too

late to save us or to save you."

"To save me?"

"That's what I said. I guess you don't know what the laws against

criminal libel in this state are? _The Clarion_ will be sued to the

limit, that's sure. But, as the man who wrote the story, you can be

sent to the penitentiary under a criminal prosecution for criminal

libel. Do you understand--to the penitentiary? I'm liable, too, in a way

of course--anybody who had anything to do with uttering or circulating

the false statement is liable. But you are in worse than the rest of

us."

In his room at the other end of the wire panic gripped poor Singlebury.

With a feeling that the earth had suddenly slumped away from under his

feet he clung desperately to the telephone instrument. He had accepted

this terrifically startling disclosure unquestioningly. Why should he

question it?

"But if--if there was no malice--if the mistake was made innocently and

in ignorance----" he babbled.

In his place in the club telephone booth Mr. Foxman, interpreting the

note of fright in the reporter's voice, grinned to himself. Singlebury,

it was plain, didn't know anything about libel law. And Singlebury, it

was equally plain, was accepting without question or analysis all that

he was hearing.

"Lack of malice doesn't excuse in this state!" Mr. Foxman said, speaking

with grim menace; "you haven't a leg to stand on. There'll be warrants

out before breakfast time in the morning; and by noon you'll be in a

jail cell unless you get out of this town to-night before they find out

the name of the man who wrote this story. Have you got any money?"

"I've--I've got some money," answered Singlebury, shaping the words with

difficulty. "But, Mr. Foxman, if I'm responsible I can face the

consequences. I'm willing to----"

"Singlebury, I'm telling you that you haven't a chance. I sent you out

on this story--that was my mistake--and you got your facts twisted--that

was your mistake. Even so, I don't want to see you suffer. I tell you

you haven't a show if you stay in this state ten hours longer. You'll

wear stripes. I'm warning you--giving you this chance to get away while

there's still time--because you're a young man, a stranger in this

community, with no influence to help you outside of what _The Clarion_

could give you, and that would be mighty little. _The Clarion_ will be

in bad enough itself. The man who owns this paper would sacrifice you in

a minute to save himself or his paper. He can't afford to throw me to

the lions, but with you it's different. If you beat it he may make a

scapegoat of you, but it'll be at long distance where it won't hurt you

much. If you stay you'll be a scapegoat just the same--and you'll serve

time besides. Because I can't help feeling sorry for you I'm offering

you a chance by giving you this warning."

"I'll go then--I'll go right away, I'll do as you say, sir. What--what

would you suggest?"

"If I were you I'd catch a ferry for the Jersey shore before

daylight--they run all night, the ferries do. And as soon as I landed on

the Jersey shore I'd catch a train for the West or the South or

somewhere and I'd stay on it till it stopped, no matter how far it took

me--the farther from this town the better. And for the time being I'd

change my name--that's my parting confidential advice to you. Good-bye.

I've wasted more time already than I can spare." And having, as he

figured, chosen the proper moment for ringing off, Mr. Foxman

accordingly rang off.

But he made sure of the last detail--this calculating, foreseeing,

prudent man. It was less than six blocks from his club to Singlebury's

hotel. He drove the distance as speedily as a motor could carry him and,

halting the taxi he had hired in the quiet street on the opposite side

of the roadway, he, hidden in its interior, sat waiting and watching

through the cab window; until, a little later, he saw Singlebury issue

from the doorway of the Godey Arms, carrying a valise in his hand, saw

him climb into a hansom cab and saw him drive away, heading westward.

By Mr. Foxman's directions his own cab trailed the cab bearing the other

right to the ferry. Not until his eyes had followed the diminishing

figure of the reporter while it vanished into the ferry house did he

give orders to his driver to take him home to his apartment. Seasoned

and veteran nighthawk of the Tenderloin that he was, the driver

concerned himself not a bit with the peculiar conduct of any passenger

of his. He did simply as he was told. If he was paid his legal fare and

a sufficient tip besides, he could forget anything that happened while

he and his chariot were under charter. For a sufficiently attractive

bonus he would have winked at manslaughter. That was his code.

Being deposited at his home shortly before three A. M., Mr. Foxman

became aware of a let-down sensation. With the strain relieved he felt

the after-effects of the strain. He was sleepy and he was very tired;

likewise very happy. Not a slip had occurred anywhere. Blake had been

tractable and Singlebury had been credulous, and Hemburg, of course, had

been obedient. The story would never see daylight, the big merger would

be announced according to schedule, and Pearl Street common would go

kiting up thirty or forty, or maybe fifty points. And he was loaded to

the gunwales with the stock--bought at nineteen and three-quarters. For

obvious reasons Blake would keep his mouth shut; for other reasons, just

as good, Pratt, Bogardus and Murtha would keep their mouths closed too.

They might, in private, indulge in a spell of wonderment, but they would

do their wondering where no outsider overheard it--that was sure.

Hemburg, who travelled in an alcoholic maze anyhow, doing as he was told

and asking no questions, would not be apt to talk. Why should he talk?

Moreover, upon some plausible excuse Mr. Foxman meant that Hemburg and

_The Clarion_ should shortly part company. General Lignum, happily,

would be absent from the country for at least a month and possibly for

six weeks. If by the time he returned he hadn't forgotten all about the

East Side traction business it would be easy enough to make him forget

about it. Pulling wool over Lignum's eyes should be the easiest of jobs.

Lignum would be having his political ambitions to think about; one beat

more or less would mean nothing to Lignum, who had no journalistic

instincts or training anyway.

As for Singlebury--well, the coup by which that young man had been

disposed of was the smartest trick of them all, so Mr. Foxman told

himself. Every avenue leading to possible detection was closed up,

blocked off and sealed shut. In any event he, Hobart Foxman, was bound

to make his pile; it was highly probable that there would be no price to

pay in the subsequent loss of Hobart Foxman's professional reputation.

He had been prepared, if need be, to surrender his good name in exchange

for a fortune, but if he might have both--the name and the fortune--so

much the better for Hobart Foxman.

He hummed a cheerful little tune as he undressed himself and got into

bed. There he slept like a dead man until the long hand of the clock

had circled the clock face a good many times.

It was getting along toward eleven o'clock in the forenoon and the

summer sunlight, slipping through chinks in the curtains at the windows

of his bedroom, had patterned the bed covers with yellow stencillings

when Mr. Foxman awoke. For a spell he yawned and stretched. Then, in his

slippers and his dressing gown, he went through the hall to the dining

room to tell the maid out in the kitchen she might serve him his

breakfast. According to the rule of the household copies of all the

morning papers were lying at his place on the dining table. There was

quite a sizable heap of them. _The Clarion_, folded across, made the

topmost layer of the pile. Governed more by a habit of long standing

than by any active desire to see what it contained, he picked it up and

opened it out.

* * * * *

Out in the kitchen the maid heard some one in the dining room give a

queer strangled cry. She came running. Her master stood in the middle of

the floor with an opened newspaper in his two shaking hands. He didn't

seem to see her, didn't seem to hear the astonished bleat which promptly

she uttered; but above the rim of the printed sheet she saw his face.

She saw it in the first instant of entering, and for sundry succeeding

seconds saw nothing else. It was a face as white as so much chalk, and

set in it a pair of eyes that popped from their sockets and glared like

two shiny, white-ringed, agate marbles, and at its lower end a jaw that

lolled down until it threatened self-dislocation. The maid figured Mr.

Foxman had been rendered suddenly and seriously unwell by something

shocking he had found in the paper.

Therein she was right; it was a true diagnosis if ever there was one.

Mr. Foxman had been suddenly and sorely stricken in the midst of health

and contentment; Mr. Foxman was now seriously unwell, both physically

and as to the state of his nervous system.

Indeed the gentleman was in even more deplorable case than the foregoing

words would indicate. Mr. Foxman was the engineer who is hoisted by his

own petard. He was the hunter who falls into the pitfall he himself has

digged, who is impaled on the stake he himself has planted. He was the

hangman who chokes in the noose he wove for other victims. In short, Mr.

Foxman was whatever best describes, by simile and comparison, the

creature which unexpectedly is wrecked and ruined by contrivances of its

own devisement.

At the top of the first page of _The Clarion_, smeared across three

columns in letters which, to Mr. Foxman's petrified gaze, seemed cubits

high, ran a certain well-remembered scare head, and under that, in

two-column measure, a box of black-faced type, and under that, with its

accusations bristling out from the body matter like naked lance tips,

followed the story which told of the proposed Pearl Street trolley grab

and the proposed East Side merger steal.

All of it was there, every word of it, from the crackling first

paragraph to the stinging wasp tail of the last sentence!

The telephone has played a considerable part in this recital. It is to

play still one more part and then we are done with telephones.

Mr. Foxman regained the faculty of consecutive thought--presently he

did. He ran to the telephone, and after a little time during which he

wildly blasphemed at the delay he secured connection with the office of

the firm of brokers who carried the account of Mr. X.

It was too late to save anything from the wreckage; the hour for

salvaging had gone by. A clerk's voice, over the wire, conveyed back the

melancholy tidings. A bomb had burst in Wall Street that morning. The

East Side merger scheme had been blown into smithereens by a sensational

story appearing in _The Clarion_, and the fragments still were falling

in a clattering shower on the floor of the stock exchange. As for Pearl

Street trolley common, that had gone clear through to the basement. The

last quotation on this forsaken stock had been seven and a half asked,

and nothing at all offered.

The account of Mr. X, therefore, was an account no longer; it was off

the books. Mr. X's ten-point margin having been exhausted, Mr. X had

been closed out, and to all intents and purposes neither he nor his

account any longer existed.

Mr. Foxman's indisposition increased in the intensity of its visible

symptoms until the alarmed maid, standing helplessly by, decided that

Mr. Foxman was about to have a stroke of some sort. As a matter of fact

he had already had it--two strokes really, both of them severe ones.

* * * * *

We go back a little now--to the evening before. We go back to the

alcoholic Hemburg, trying to make good in his _ad-interim_ eminence as

acting make-up editor and, in pursuance of this ambition, riding for the

time being upon the water wagon, with every personal intention of

continuing so to ride during all time to come.

When he came on duty shortly after seven o'clock every famished,

tortured fibre in him was calling out for whiskey. His thirst was riding

him like an Old Man of the Seas. He sweated cold drops in his misery

and, to bolster his resolution, called up every shred of moral strength

that remained to him. Inside him a weakened will fought with an outraged

appetite, and his jangled nerves bore the stress of this struggle

between determination and a frightful craving.

In this state then, with his brain cells divided in their allegiance to

him and his rebellious body in a tremor of torment, he was called upon

very soon after his arrival at the office to carry out an important

commission for the man who had bestowed upon him his temporary

promotion. Taking the command over the wire, he hurried upstairs to

execute it.

Had he been comparatively drunk it is certain that Hemburg would have

made no slip; automatically his fuddled mind would have governed his

hand to mechanical obedience of the direction. But being comparatively

sober--as sober as nearly twenty-four hours of abstinence could make

him--poor Hemburg was in a swirl of mental confusion. At that,

out-mastered as he was, he made only one mistake.

There were two stories lying in type, side by side, on the stone. One of

them was to be played up in the leading position in the make-up. The

other was to be dumped in the hell-box. That was the order, plain enough

in his own mind. So one of them he dumped, and the other one he put in

the forms to be printed.

The mistake he made was this: He dumped the wrong one and he ran the

wrong one. He dumped the long Washington dispatch into a heap of metal

linotype strips, fit only to be melted back again into leaden bars, and

he ran the Singlebury masterpiece. That's what Hemburg did--that's all.

* * * * *

Well then, these things resulted: Mrs. Foxman lost her

ten-thousand-dollar legacy and never thereafter forgave her husband for

frittering away the inheritance in what she deemed to have been a mad

fit of witless speculation. Even though his money had gone with hers

she never forgave him.

Mr. Foxman, having sold his birthright of probity and honour and

self-respect for as bitter and disappointing a mess of pottage as ever

mortal man had to swallow, nevertheless went undetected in his

crookedness and continued to hold his job as managing editor of _The

Clarion_.

General Robert Bruce Lignum, a perfectly innocent and well-meaning

victim, was decisively beaten in his race for the United States

senatorship. Mr. Blake saw to that personally--Mr. John W. Blake, who

figured that in some way he had been double-crossed and who, having in

silence nursed his grudge to keep it warm, presently took his revenge

upon Foxman's employer, since he saw no way, in view of everything, of

hurting Foxman without further exposing himself. Also, to save himself

and his associates from the possibility of travelling to state's prison,

Mr. Blake found it incumbent upon him to use some small part of his

tainted fortune in corrupting a district attorney, who up until then had

been an honourable man with a future before him of honourable preferment

in the public service. So, though there were indictments in response to

public clamour, there were no prosecutions, and the guilty ones went

unwhipped of justice. And after a while, when the popular indignation

engendered by _The Clarion's_ disclosure had entirely abated, and the

story was an old story, and the law's convenient delays had been

sufficiently invoked, and a considerable assortment of greedy palms at

Albany and elsewhere had been crossed with dirty dollars, the East Side

merger, in a different form and with a different set of dummy directors

behind it, was successfully put through, substantially as per former

programme. But by that time the original holders of Pearl Street trolley

stocks had all been frozen out and had nothing to show for their pains

and their money, except heart pangs and an empty bag to hold.

Bogardus, the lobbyist, and old Pratt, the class leader, and Lawyer

Murtha, the two-faced--not one of whom, judged by the common standards

of honest folk, had been actuated by clean motives--enjoyed their little

laugh at Blake's passing discomfiture, but afterward, as I recall, they

patched up their quarrels with him and each, in his own special field of

endeavour, basked once more in the golden sunshine of their patron's

favour, waxing fat on the crumbs which dropped from the greater man's

table.

Hemburg's reward for striving, however feebly, to cure himself of the

curse of liquor was that promptly he lost his place on _The Clarion's_

staff--Mr. Foxman personally attended to that detail--and because of his

habits could not get a job on any other paper and became a borrower of

quarters along Park Row.

Singlebury, who did a good reporter's job and wrote a great story, was

never to have the small consolation of knowing that after all he had not

committed criminal libel, nor that he had not got his names or his facts

twisted, nor even that his story did appear in _The Clarion_. Without

stopping long enough even to buy a copy of the paper, he ran away, a

fugitive, dreading the fear of arrest that had been conjured up in

another's imagination and craftily grafted upon his beguiled

intelligence. And he never stopped running, either, until he was in

Denver, Colorado, where he had to make a fresh start all over again.

While he was making it the girl in San Jose, California, got tired of

waiting for him and broke off the engagement and married someone else.

What is the moral of it all?

You can search me.