It was a stormy night in the autumn of 1930. The hour was about eleven.
San Francisco lay in darkness, for the laborers at the gas works had
struck and destroyed the company's property because a newspaper to which
a cousin of the manager was a subscriber had censured the course of a
potato merchant related by marriage to a member of the Knights of
Leisure. Electric lights had not at that period been reinvented. The sky
was filled with great masses of black cloud which, driven rapidly across
the star-fields by winds unfelt on the earth and momentarily altering
their fantastic forms, seemed instinct with a life and activity of their
own and endowed with awful powers of evil, to the exercise of which they
might at any time set their malignant will.
An observer standing, at this time, at the corner of Paradise avenue and
Great White Throne walk in Sorrel Hill cemetery would have seen a human
figure moving among the graves toward the Superintendent's residence.
Dimly and fitfully visible in the intervals of thinner gloom, this
figure had a most uncanny and disquieting aspect. A long black cloak
shrouded it from neck to heel. Upon its head was a slouch hat, pulled
down across the forehead and almost concealing the face, which was
further hidden by a half-mask, only the beard being occasionally visible
as the head was lifted partly above the collar of the cloak. The man
wore upon his feet jack-boots whose wide, funnel-shaped legs had settled
down in many a fold and crease about his ankles, as could be seen
whenever accident parted the bottom of the cloak. His arms were
concealed, but sometimes he stretched out the right to steady himself by
a headstone as he crept stealthily but blindly over the uneven ground.
At such times a close scrutiny of the hand would have disclosed in the
palm the hilt of a poniard, the blade of which lay along the wrist,
hidden in the sleeve. In short, the man's garb, his movements, the
hour--everything proclaimed him a reporter.
But what did he there?
On the morning of that day the editor of the _Daily Malefactor_ had
touched the button of a bell numbered 216 and in response to the summons
Mr. Longbo Spittleworth, reporter, had been shot into the room out of an
inclined tube.
"I understand," said the editor, "that you are 216--am I right?"
"That," said the reporter, catching his breath and adjusting his
clothing, both somewhat disordered by the celerity of his flight through
the tube,--"that is my number."
"Information has reached us," continued the editor, "that the
Superintendent of the Sorrel Hill cemetery--one Inhumio, whose very name
suggests inhumanity--is guilty of the grossest outrages in the
administration of the great trust confided to his hands by the sovereign
people."
"The cemetery is private property," faintly suggested 216.
"It is alleged," continued the great man, disdaining to notice the
interruption, "that in violation of popular rights he refuses to permit
his accounts to be inspected by representatives of the press."
"Under the law, you know, he is responsible to the directors of the
cemetery company," the reporter ventured to interject.
"They say," pursued the editor, heedless, "that the inmates are in many
cases badly lodged and insufficiently clad, and that in consequence they
are usually cold. It is asserted that they are never fed--except to the
worms. Statements have been made to the effect that males and females
are permitted to occupy the same quarters, to the incalculable detriment
of public morality. Many clandestine villainies are alleged of this
fiend in human shape, and it is desirable that his underground methods
be unearthed in the _Malefactor_. If he resists we will drag his family
skeleton from the privacy of his domestic closet. There is money in it
for the paper, fame for you--are you ambitious, 216?"
"I am--bitious."
"Go, then," cried the editor, rising and waving his hand
imperiously--"go and 'seek the bubble reputation'."
"The bubble shall be sought," the young man replied, and leaping into a
man-hole in the floor, disappeared. A moment later the editor, who after
dismissing his subordinate, had stood motionless, as if lost in thought,
sprang suddenly to the man-hole and shouted down it: "Hello, 216?"
"Aye, aye, sir," came up a faint and far reply.
"About that 'bubble reputation'--you understand, I suppose, that the
reputation which you are to seek is that of the other man."
In the execution of his duty, in the hope of his employer's approval, in
the costume of his profession, Mr. Longbo Spittleworth, otherwise known
as 216, has already occupied a place in the mind's eye of the
intelligent reader. Alas for poor Mr. Inhumio!
A few days after these events that fearless, independent and
enterprising guardian and guide of the public, the San Francisco _Daily
Malefactor_, contained a whole-page article whose headlines are here
presented with some necessary typographical mitigation:
"Hell Upon Earth! Corruption Rampant in the Management of the Sorrel
Hill Cemetery. The Sacred City of the Dead in the Leprous Clutches of a
Demon in Human Form. Fiendish Atrocities Committed in 'God's Acre.' The
Holy Dead Thrown around Loose. Fragments of Mothers. Segregation of a
Beautiful Young Lady Who in Life Was the Light of a Happy Household. A
Superintendent Who Is an Ex-Convict. How He Murdered His Neighbor to
Start the Cemetery. He Buries His Own Dead Elsewhere. Extraordinary
Insolence to a Representative of the Public Press. Little Eliza's Last
Words: 'Mamma, Feed Me to the Pigs.' A Moonshiner Who Runs an Illicit
Bone-Button Factory in One Corner of the Grounds. Buried Head Downward.
Revolting Mausoleistic Orgies. Dancing on the Dead. Devilish
Mutilation--a Pile of Late Lamented Noses and Sainted Ears. No
Separation of the Sexes; Petitions for Chaperons Unheeded. 'Veal' as
Supplied to the Superintendent's Employees. A Miscreant's Record from
His Birth. Disgusting Subserviency of Our Contemporaries and Strong
Indications of Collusion. Nameless Abnormalities. 'Doubled Up Like a
Nut-Cracker.' 'Wasn't Planted White.' Horribly Significant Reduction in
the Price of Lard. The Question of the Hour: Whom Do You Fry Your
Doughnuts In?"