Bob could not afford to be fired. He had been a newspaper reporter all
his life, and always would be. His salary had always been small, and
always would be. His savings were spasmodic, disappearing like snow
patches on a sunny day before the occasional emergencies of life, and
emergencies insisted on arising. Emergencies do arise, when a man has a
family. Just now, for example, his wife was only two days out of
hospital, and the bill unpaid.... No, he could not afford the luxury of
being fired.
So fear scourged and shook him. It was physical; there were certain
muscular and nervous reactions that went with it. His heels, tucked
under his chair, felt naked and chilled by the little currents of air
that circulated along the floor. His bowels were sick within him, as
though there were an actual, ponderable weight in his mid-section. His
ears, attuned to what went on in the room behind him, seemed unnaturally
enlarged, and there were pricklings in his scalp.
He had known fear before. Such dull periods come to every newspaper
office. But Bob had always pulled through, escaped discharge. He had
worked at this same desk for a dozen years.... Had come here from the
_Journal_, feeling a little proudly that he was taking an upward step,
beginning at last to climb. It had meant more money. Thirty-five dollars
a week. He was getting forty, now. So little, yet enough to make a man a
coward.
Bob had never been fired from any job. The process of discharge was
cloaked, in his thoughts, with an awful mystery. Sometimes men found a
note, in a blue envelope, in their mail boxes; sometimes Dade called
them to him, spoke to them, explained the necessity which forced him to
let them go. They took it variously; defiantly, calmly, humbly, as their
natures dictated. But it had never happened to Bob....
He was afraid, these days, to go to his box for mail lest the dreaded
note be there; and when Dade stopped at his desk or called him across
the room he cringed to his very soul with dread. He was, no doubt of it
at all, an arrant and an utter coward.
So he sat, this morning, and wrote, over, and over again:
“_Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. Now
is the...._” Or shifted, and tapped off: “_The quick brown fox jumps
over the lazy dog._” He was still thus occupied when Dade called from
his broad desk by the window:
“Bob!”
The little old man looked fearfully around, and Dade beckoned. Bob’s
heart dropped into his boots; he was fairly white with fear. Perhaps
Boswell had told Dade to let him go....
Nevertheless, he faced the music. Got up and went across the room toward
where the City Editor was standing. And he managed a smile. Beat down
his panic and smiled.
Dade kept him waiting. The City Editor was giving some instructions to
Ingalls, the City Hall man. Bob, his thoughts misted and confused by his
own apprehensions, nevertheless heard what Dade was saying, and
subconsciously registered and filed it away.
“ ...going to start something,” Dade explained to Ingalls. “Mr. Boswell
is interested, so you want to get results. The Building Department has
been slack. Not inspectors enough, maybe. Fire Department, too. There
were two girls caught in that fire in the South End ten days ago. Got
out, I know, but it was luck. We’re going to cover every fire, from now
on. Going to watch the fire-escapes and the fire-doors and get the goods
on this bunch, if they’ve been falling down. You keep it to yourself,
but see what you can dig up. There must be stuff filed, up there. I’ll
let you know.... Don’t make any breaks till you hear from me, but keep
on the job....”
Bob listened, finding some relief from his own apprehensions in doing
so. “Another crusade ...” he thought, idly. Abruptly, Dade dismissed
Ingalls and turned to him, and Bob turned pale, then colored with relief
when he understood that Dade simply wished to give him an assignment.
“Jack Brenton,” Dade said, in the staccato sentences which were his
habit. “We hear his wife has run away from him. He lives out in
Hanbridge. Here’s the address. I sent the district man over. He says
Brenton’s drunk. Threatened to shoot him. You’ll have to handle him
right. Jack’s a bruiser, looking for trouble. Ask him if it’s true his
wife’s gone. Ask him who she went with, and why, and what he’s going to
do about it. Telephone me.”
Bob nodded. “All right,” he said quickly. “I’ll phone in.” He swung back
to his desk for coat and hat, eager to be away, eager to be out of the
office and away from present peril.