AGNES FINDS BOBBY A SLING AND BOBBY PUTS A STONE IN IT
The wonderful change in a girl who, through her love, has become all
woman, that was the marvel to Bobby; the breadth of her knowledge, the
depth of her sympathy, the boundlessness of her compassionate
forgiveness, her quality of motherliness; and this last was perhaps
the greatest marvel of all. Yet even his marveling did not encompass
all the wonder. In his last exploit, more full of folly than anything
into which he had yet blundered, and the one which, of all others,
might most have turned her from him, Agnes had had the harder part; to
sit at home and wait, to dread she knew not what. The certainty which
finally evolved had less of distress in it than not to know while day
by day passed by. One thing had made it easier: never for one moment
had she lost faith in Bobby, in any way. She was certain, however,
that financially his trip would be a losing one, and from the time he
left she kept her mind almost constantly upon the thought of his
future. She had become almost desperately anxious for him to fulfill
the hopes of his father, and day by day she studied the commercial
field as she had never thought it possible that she could do. There
was no line of industry upon which she did not ponder, and there was
scarcely any morning that she did not at the breakfast table ask Dan
Elliston the ins and outs of some business. If he was not able to tell
her all she wanted to know, she usually commissioned him to find out.
He took these requests in good part, and if she accomplished nothing
else by all her inquiries she acquired such a commercial education as
falls to the lot of but few home-kept young women.
One morning her uncle came down a trifle late for breakfast and was in
a hurry.
"The Elliston School of Commercial Instruction will have a recess for
this session," he observed as he popped into his chair. "I have an
important engagement at the factory this morning and have about seven
minutes for breakfast. During that seven minutes I prefer to eat
rather than to talk. However, I do not object to listening. This being
my last word except to request you to gather things closely about my
plate, you may now start."
"Very well," said she, dimpling as she usually did at any evidence of
briskness on the part of her Uncle Dan, for from long experience she
knew the harmlessness of his bark. "Nick Allstyne happened to remark
to me last night that the _Bulletin_ is for sale. What do you think of
the newspaper business for Bobby?"
"The time necessary to answer that question takes my orange from me,"
objected Uncle Dan as he hastily sipped another bite of the fruit and
pushed it away. "The newspaper business for Bobby!" He drew the
muffins toward him and took one upon his plate, then he stopped and
pondered a moment. "Do you know," said he, "that's about the best
suggestion you've made. I believe he could make a hummer out of a
newspaper. I've noticed this about the boy's failures; they have all
of them been due to lack of experience; none of them has been due to
any absence of backbone. Nobody has ever bluffed him."
Agnes softly clapped her hands.
"Exactly!" she cried. "Well, Uncle Dan, this is the last word _I'm_
going to say. For the balance of your seven minutes I'm going to help
stuff you with enough food to keep you until luncheon time; but
sometime to-day, if you find time, I want you to go over and see the
proprietor of the _Bulletin_ and find out how much he wants for his
property, and investigate it as a business proposition just the same
as if you were going into it yourself."
Uncle Dan, dipping voraciously into his soft boiled eggs, grinned and
said: "Huh!" Then he looked at his watch. When he came home to dinner,
however, he hunted up Agnes at once.
"Your _Bulletin_ proposition looks pretty good," he told her. "I saw
Greenleaf. He's a physical wreck and has been for two years. He has to
get away or die. Moreover, his physical condition has reacted upon his
paper. His circulation has run down, but he has a magnificent plant
and a good office organization. He wants two hundred thousand dollars
for his plant, good will and franchises. I'm going to investigate this
a little further. Do you suppose Bobby will have two hundred thousand
left when he gets through with grand opera?"
"I hope so," replied Agnes; "but if he hasn't I'll have him waste the
balance of this two hundred and fifty thousand so that he can draw the
next one."
Uncle Dan laughed in huge enjoyment of this solution.
"You surely were cut out for high finance," he told her.
She smiled, and was silent a while, hesitating.
"You seem to think pretty well of the business as a business
proposition," she ventured anxiously, by and by; "but you haven't told
me what you think of it as applicable to Bobby."
"If he'll take you in the office with him, he'll do all right," he
answered her banteringly; but when he went up-stairs and found his
wife he said: "Constance, if that girl don't pull Bobby Burnit through
his puppyhood in good shape there is something wrong with the scheme
of creation. There is something about you women of the Elliston family
that every once in a while makes me pause and reverence the Almighty,"
whereupon Aunt Constance flushed prettily, as became her.
With the same earnestness of purpose Agnes handled the question of
Bobby's breach-of-promise suit in so far as it affected his social
reception. The Ellistons went to the theater and sat in a box to
exhibit him on the second night after his return, and Agnes took
careful count of all the people she knew who attended the theater that
night. The next day she went to see all of them, among others Mrs.
Horace Wickersham, whose social word was social law.
"My dear," said the redoubtable Mrs. Wickersham, "it does Bobby Burnit
great credit that he did not marry the creature. Of course I shall
invite him to our affair next Friday night."
After that there could be no further question of Bobby's standing,
though without the firm support of Agnes he might possibly have been
ostracised, for a time at least.
It was with much less certainty that she spread before Bobby the facts
and figures which Uncle Dan had secured about the condition and
prospects of the _Bulletin_. She did not urge the project upon him.
Instead, though in considerable anxiety, she left the proposition open
to his own judgment. He pondered the question more soberly and
seriously than he had yet considered anything. There were but two
chances left to redeem himself now, and he felt much like a gambler
who has been reduced to his last desperate stake. He grew almost
haggard over the proposition, and he spent two solid weeks in
investigation. He went to Washington to see Jack Starlett, who knew
three or four newspaper proprietors in Philadelphia and elsewhere. He
obtained introductions to these people and consulted with them,
inspected their plants and listened to all they would say; as they
liked him, they said much. Ripened considerably by what he had found
out he came back home and bought the _Bulletin_. Moreover, he had very
definitely made up his mind precisely what to do with it.
On the first morning that he walked into the office of that paper as
its sole owner and proprietor, he called the managing editor to him
and asked:
"What, heretofore, has been the politics of this paper?"
"Pale yellow jelly," snapped Ben Jolter wrathfully.
"Supposed to be anti-Stone, hasn't it been?" Bobby smilingly inquired.
"But always perfectly ladylike in what it said about him."
"And what are the politics of the employees?"
At this Mr. Jolter snorted.
"They are good newspaper men, Mr. Burnit," he stated in quick defense;
"and a good newspaper man has no politics."
Bobby eyed Mr. Jolter with contemplative favor. He was a stout,
stockily-built man, with a square head and sparse gray hair that would
persist in tangling and curling at the ends; and he perpetually kept
his sleeves rolled up over his big arms.
"I don't know anything about this business," confessed Bobby, "but I
hope to. First of all, I'd like to find out why the _Bulletin_ has no
circulation."
"The lack of a spinal column," asserted Jolter. "It has had no policy,
stood pat on no proposition, and made no aggressive fight on
anything."
"If I understand what you mean by the word," said Bobby slowly, "the
_Bulletin_ is going to have a policy."
It was now Mr. Jolter's turn to gaze contemplatively at Bobby.
"If you were ten years older I would feel more hopeful about it," he
decided bluntly.
The young man flushed uncomfortably. He was keenly aware that he had
made an ass of himself in business four successive times, and that
Jolter knew it. By way of facing the music, however, he showed to his
managing editor a letter, left behind with old Johnson for Bobby by
the late John Burnit:
The mere fact that a man has been foolish four times is no
absolute proof that he is a fool; but it's a mighty
significant hint. However, Bobby, I'm still betting on you,
for by this time you ought to have your fighting blood at the
right temperature; and I've seen you play great polo in spite
of a cracked rib.
"P. S. If any one else intimates that you are a fool, trounce
him one for me."
"If there's anything in heredity you're a lucky young man," said
Jolter seriously, as he handed back the letter.
"I think the governor was worried about it himself," admitted Bobby
with a smile; "and if he was doubtful I can't blame you for being so.
Nevertheless, Mr. Jolter, I must insist that we are going to have a
policy," and he quietly outlined it.
Mr. Jolter had been so long a directing voice in the newspaper
business that he could not be startled by anything short of a
presidential assassination, and that at press time. Nevertheless, at
Bobby's announcement he immediately sought for his pipe and was
compelled to go into his own office after it. He came back lighting it
and felt better.
"It's suicide!" he declared.
"Then we'll commit suicide," said Bobby pleasantly.
Mr. Jolter, after long, grinning thought, solemnly shook hands with
him.
"I'm for it," said he. "Here's hoping that we survive long enough to
write our own obituary!"
Mr. Jolter, to whom fighting was as the breath of new-mown hay, and
who had long been curbed in that delightful occupation, went back into
his own office with a more cheerful air than he had worn for many a
day, and issued a few forceful orders, winding up with a direction to
the press foreman to prepare for ten thousand extra copies that
evening.
When the three o'clock edition of the _Bulletin_ came on the street,
the entire first page was taken up by a life-size half-tone portrait
of Sam Stone, and underneath it was the simple legend:
THIS MAN MUST LEAVE TOWN
The first citizens to awake to the fact that the _Bulletin_ was born
anew were the newsboys. Those live and enterprising merchants, with a
very keen judgment of comparative values, had long since ceased to
call the _Bulletin_ at all; half of them had even ceased to carry it.
Within two minutes after this edition was out they were clamoring for
additional copies, and for the first time in years the alley door of
the _Bulletin_ was besieged by a seething mob of ragged, diminutive,
howling masculinity. Out on the street, however, they were not even
now calling the name of the paper. They were holding forth that black
first page and screaming just the name of Sam Stone.
Sam Stone! It was a magic name, for Stone had been the boss of the
town since years without number; a man who had never held office, but
who dictated the filling of all offices; a man who was not ostensibly
in any business, but who swayed the fortune of every public
enterprise; a self-confessed grafter whom crusade after crusade had
failed to dislodge from absolute power. The crowds upon the street
snapped eagerly at that huge portrait and searched as eagerly through
the paper for more about the Boss. They did not find it, except upon
the editorial page, where, in the space usually devoted to drivel
about "How Kind We Should Be to Dumb Animals," and "Why Fathers Should
Confide More in Their Sons," appeared in black type a paraphrase of
the legend on the outside: "_Sam Stone Must Leave Town._" Beneath was
the additional information: "Further issues of the _Bulletin_ will
tell why." Above and below this was nothing but startlingly white
blank paper, two solid columns of it up and down the page.
Down in the deep basement of the _Bulletin_, the big three-deck
presses, two of which had been standing idle since the last
presidential election, were pounding out copies by the thousand, while
grimy pressmen, blackened with ink, perspired most happily.
By five o'clock, men and even girls, pouring from their offices, and
laborers coming from work, had all heard of it, and on the street the
bold defiance created first a gasp and then a smile. Another attempt
to dislodge Sam Stone was, in the light of previous efforts, a
laughable thing to contemplate; and yet it was interesting.
In the office of the _Bulletin_ it was a gleeful occasion. Nonchalant
reporters sat down with that amazing front page spread out before
them, studied the brutal face of Stone and chuckled cynically. Lean
Doc Miller, "assistant city editor," or rather head copy reader, lit
one cigarette from the stub of another and observed, to nobody in
particular but to everybody in general:
"I can see where we all contribute for a beautiful Gates Ajar floral
piece for one Robert Burnit;" whereupon fat "Bugs" Roach, "handling
copy" across the table from him, inquired:
"Do you suppose the new boss really has this much nerve, or is he just
a damned fool?"
"Stone won't do a thing to _him_!" ingratiatingly observed a "cub"
reporter, laying down twelve pages of "copy" about a man who had
almost been burglarized.
"Look here, you Greenleaf Whittier Squiggs," said Doc Miller most
savagely, not because he had any particular grudge against the
unfortunately named G. W., but because of discipline and the custom
with "cubs," "the next time you're sent out on a twenty-minute
assignment like this, remember the number of the _Bulletin_, 427 Grand
Street. The telephone is Central 2051, and don't forget to report the
same day. Did you get the man's name? Uh-huh. His address? Uh-huh.
Well, we don't want the item."
Slow and phlegmatic Jim Brown, who had been city editor on the
_Bulletin_ almost since it was the _Bulletin_ under half a dozen
changes of ownership and nearly a score of managing editors, sauntered
over into Jolter's room with a copy of the paper in his hand, and a
long black stogie held by some miracle in the corner of his mouth,
where it would be quite out of the road of conversation.
"Pretty good stuff," he drawled, indicating the remarkable first page.
"The greatest circus act that was ever pulled off in the newspaper
business," asserted Jolter. "It will quadruple the present circulation
of the _Bulletin_ in a week."
"Make or break," assented the city editor, "with the odds in favor of
the break."
A slenderly-built young man, whose red face needed a shave and whose
clothes, though wrinkled and unbrushed, shrieked of quality, came
stumbling up the stairs in such hot haste as was possible in his
condition, and without ceremony or announcement burst into the room
where Bobby Burnit, with that day's issue of the _Bulletin_ spread out
before him, was trying earnestly to get a professional idea of the
proper contents of a newspaper.
"Great goods, old man!" said the stranger. "I want to congratulate you
on your lovely nerve," and seizing Bobby's hand he shook it violently.
"Thanks," said Bobby, not quite sure whether to be amused or
resentful. "Who are you?"
"I'm Dillingham," announced the red-faced young man with a cheerful
smile.
Bobby was about to insist upon further information, when Mr. Jolter
came in to introduce Brown, who had not yet met Mr. Burnit.
"Dill," drawled Brown, with a twinkle in his eye, "how much money have
you?"
"Money to burn; money in every pocket," asserted Mr. Dillingham;
"money to last for ever," and he jammed both hands in his trousers'
pockets.
It was an astonishing surprise to Mr. Dillingham, after groping in
those pockets, to find that he brought up only a dollar bill in his
left hand and forty-five cents in silver in his right. He was still
contemplating in awed silence this perplexing fact when Brown handed
him a five-dollar bill.
"Now, you run right out and get stewed to the eyebrows again,"
directed Brown. "Get properly pickled and have it over with, then show
up here in the morning with a headache and get to work. We want you to
take charge of the Sam Stone expose, and in to-morrow's _Bulletin_ we
want the star introduction of your life."
"Do you mean to say you're going to trust the whole field conduct of
this campaign to that chap?" asked Bobby, frowning, when Dillingham
had gone.
"This is his third day, so Dill's safe for to-morrow morning," Brown
hastened to assure him. "He'll be up here early, so penitent that
he'll be incased in a blue fog--and he'll certainly deliver the
goods."
Bobby sighed and gave it up. This was a new world.
Over in his dingy little office, up his dingy flight of stairs, Sam
Stone sat at his bare and empty old desk, looking contemplatively out
of the window, when Frank Sharpe--his luxuriant gray mustache in an
extraordinary and most violent state of straggling curliness--came
nervously bustling in with a copy of the _Bulletin_ in his hand.
"Have you seen this?" he shrilled.
"Heard about it," grunted Stone.
"But what do you think of it?" demanded Sharpe indignantly, and spread
the paper out on the desk before the Boss, thumping it violently with
his knuckles.
Stone studied it well, without the slightest change of expression upon
his heavy features.
"It's a swell likeness," he quietly conceded, by and by.