The Clarion
by Samuel Hopkins Adams · English · Gutenberg #16447 · 703,012 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Clarion
Author: Samuel Hopkins Adams
Illustrator: William Dodge Stevens
Release date: August 5, 2005 [eBook #16447]
Most recently updated: December 12, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16447
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CLARION ***
Produced by Robert Shimmin, Robert Ledger and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: "THEN IT'S ALL LIES! LIES AND MURDER!"]
THE CLARION
BY
SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY W.D. STEVENS
_Published October 1914_
TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER MYRON ADAMS WHO LIVED AND DIED A SOLDIER OF
IDEALS THIS BOOK IS REVERENTLY INSCRIBED
CONTENTS
I. THE ITINERANT
II. OUR LEADING CITIZEN
III. ESMÉ
IV. THE SHOP
V. THE SCION
VI. LAUNCHED
VII. THE OWNER
VIII. A PARTNERSHIP
IX. GLIMMERINGS
X. IN THE WAY OF TRADE
XI. THE INITIATE
XII. THE THIN EDGE
XIII. NEW BLOOD
XIV. THE ROOKERIES
XV. JUGGERNAUT
XVI. THE STRATEGIST
XVII. REPRISALS
XVIII. MILLY
XIX. DONNYBROOK
XX. THE LESSER TEMPTING
XXI. THE POWER OF PRINT
XXII. PATRIOTS
XXIII. CREEPING FLAME
XXIV. A FAILURE IN TACTICS
XXV. STERN LOGIC
XXVI. THE PARTING
XXVII. THE GREATER TEMPTING
XXVIII. "WHOSE BREAD I EAT"
XXIX. CERTINA CHARLEY
XXX. ILLUMINATION
XXXI. THE VOICE OF THE PROPHET
XXXII. THE WARNING
XXXIII. THE GOOD FIGHT
XXXIV. VOX POPULI
XXXV. TEMPERED METAL
XXXVI. THE VICTORY
XXXVII. MCGUIRE ELLIS WAKES UP
XXXVIII. THE CONVERT
ILLUSTRATIONS
"THEN IT'S ALL LIES! LIES AND MURDER!"
HELP AND CURE ARE AT THEIR BECK AND CALL
"KILL IT," SHE URGED SOFTLY
"DON'T GO NEAR HIM. DON'T LOOK"
THE CLARION
CHAPTER I
THE ITINERANT
Between two flames the man stood, overlooking the crowd. A soft breeze,
playing about the torches, sent shadows billowing across the massed folk
on the ground. Shrewdly set with an eye to theatrical effect, these
phares of a night threw out from the darkness the square bulk of the
man's figure, and, reflecting garishly upward from the naked hemlock of
the platform, accentuated, as in bronze, the bosses of the face, and
gleamed deeply in the dark, bold eyes. Half of Marysville buzzed and
chattered in the park-space below, together with many representatives of
the farming country near by, for the event had been advertised with
skilled appeal: cf. the "Canoga County Palladium," April 15, 1897, page
4.
The occupant of the platform, having paused, after a self-introductory
trumpeting of professional claims, was slowly and with an eye to
oratorical effect moistening lips and throat from a goblet at his elbow.
Now, ready to resume, he raised a slow hand in an indescribable gesture
of mingled command and benevolence. The clamor subsided to a murmur,
over which his voice flowed and spread like oil subduing vexed waters.
"Pain. Pain. Pain. The primal curse, the dominant tragedy of life. Who
among you, dear friends, but has felt it? You men, slowly torn upon the
rack of rheumatism; you women, with the hidden agony gnawing at your
breast" (his roving regard was swift, like a hawk, to mark down the
sudden, involuntary quiver of a faded slattern under one of the
torches); "all you who have known burning nights and pallid mornings, I
offer you r-r-r-release!"
On the final word his face lighted up as from an inner fire of
inspiration, and he flung his arms wide in an embracing benediction. The
crowd, heavy-eyed, sodden, wondering, bent to him as the torch-fires
bent to the breath of summer. With the subtle sense of the man who
wrings his livelihood from human emotions, he felt the moment of his
mastery approaching. Was it fully come yet? Were his fish securely in
the net? Betwixt hovering hands he studied his audience.
His eyes stopped with a sense of being checked by the steady regard of
one who stood directly in front of him only a few feet away; a
solid-built, crisply outlined man of forty, carrying himself with a
practical erectness, upon whose face there was a rather disturbing
half-smile. The stranger's hand was clasped in that of a little girl,
wide-eyed, elfin, and lovely.
"Release," repeated the man of the torches. "Blessed release from your
torments. Peace out of pain."
The voice was of wonderful quality, rich and unctuous, the labials
dropping, honeyed, from the lips. It wooed the crowd, lured it, enmeshed
it. But the magician had, a little, lost confidence in the power of his
spell. His mind dwelt uneasily upon his well-garbed auditor. What was he
doing there, with his keen face and worldly, confident carriage, amidst
those clodhoppers? Was there peril in his presence? Your predatory
creature hunts ever with fear in his heart.
"Guardy," the voice of the elfin child rang silvery in the silence, as
she pressed close to her companion. "Guardy, is he preaching?"
"Yes, my dear little child." The orator saw his opportunity and swooped
upon it, with a flash of dazzling teeth from under his pliant lips.
"This sweet little girl asks if I am preaching. I thank her for the
word. Preaching, indeed! Preaching a blessed gospel, for this world of
pain and suffering; a gospel of hope and happiness and joy. I offer you,
here, now, this moment of blessed opportunity, the priceless boon of
health. It is within reach of the humblest and poorest as well as the
millionaire. The blessing falls on all like the gentle rain from
heaven."
His hands, outstretched, quivering as if to shed the promised balm,
slowly descended below the level of the platform railing. Behind the
tricolored cheesecloth which screened him from the waist down something
stirred. The hands ascended again into the light. In each was a bottle.
The speaker's words came now sharp, decisive, compelling.
"Here it is! Look at it, my friends. The wonder of the scientific world,
the never-failing panacea, the despair of the doctors. All diseases
yield to it. It revivifies the blood, reconstructs the nerves, drives
out the poisons which corrupt the human frame. It banishes pain,
sickness, weakness, and cheats death of his prey. Oh, grave, where is
thy victory? Oh, death, where is thy power? Overcome by my marvelous
discovery! Harmless as water! Sweet on the tongue as honey! Potent as a
miracle! By the grace of Heaven, which has bestowed this secret upon me,
I have saved five thousand men, women, and children from sure doom, in
the last three years, through my swift and infallible remedy, Professor
Certain's Vitalizing Mixture; as witness my undenied affidavit, sworn to
before Almighty God and a notary public and published in every newspaper
in the State."
Wonder and hope exhaled in a sigh from the assemblage. People began to
stir, to shift from one foot to another, to glance about them nervously.
Professor Certain had them. It needed but the first thrust of hand into
pocket to set the avalanche of coin rolling toward the platform. From
near the speaker a voice piped thinly:--
"Will it ease my cough?"
The orator bent over, and his voice was like a benign hand upon the brow
of suffering.
"Ease it? You'll never know you had a cough after one bottle."
"We-ell, gimme--"
"Just a moment, my friend." The Professor was not yet ready. "Put your
dollar back. There's enough to go around. Oh, Uncle Cal! Step up here,
please."
An old negro, very pompous and upright, made his way to the steps and
mounted.
"You all know old Uncle Cal Parks, my friends. You've seen him hobbling
and hunching around for years, all twisted up with rheumatics. He came
to me yesterday, begging for relief, and we began treatment with the
Vitalizing Mixture right off. Look at him now. Show them what you can
do, uncle."
Wild-eyed, the old fellow gazed about at the people. "Glory!
Hallelujah!" Emotional explosives left over from the previous year's
revival burst from his lips. He broke into a stiff, but prankish
double-shuffle.
"I'd like to try some o' that on my old mare," remarked a
facetious-minded rustic, below, and a titter followed.
"Good for man or beast," retorted the Professor with smiling amiability.
"You've seen what the Vitalizing Mixture has done for this poor old
colored man. It will do as much or more for any of you. And the price is
Only One Dollar!" The voice double-capitalized the words. "Don't, for
the sake of one hundred little cents, put off the day of cure. Don't
waste your chance. Don't let a miserable little dollar stand between you
and death. Come, now. Who's first?"
The victim of the "cough" was first, closely followed by the mare-owning
wit. Then the whole mass seemed to be pressing forward, at once. Like
those of a conjurer, the deft hands of the Professor pushed in and out
of the light, snatching from below the bottles handed up to him, and
taking in the clinking silver and fluttering greenbacks. And still they
came, that line of grotesques, hobbling, limping, sprawling their way to
the golden promise. Never did Pied Piper flute to creatures more
bemused. Only once was there pause, when the dispenser of balm held
aloft between thumb and finger a cart-wheel dollar.
"Phony!" he said curtly, and flipped it far into the darkness. "Don't
any more of you try it on," he warned, as the thwarted profferer of the
counterfeit sidled away, and there was, in his tone, a dominant
ferocity.
Presently the line of purchasers thinned out. The Vitalizing Mixture had
exhausted its market. But only part of the crowd had contributed to the
levy. Mainly it was the men, whom the "spiel" had lured. Now for the
women. The voice, the organ of a genuine artist, took on a new cadence,
limpid and tender.
"And now, we come to the sufferings of those who bear pain with the
fortitude of the angels. Our women-folk! How many here are hiding that
dreadful malady, cancer? Hiding it, when help and cure are at their beck
and call. Lady," he bent swiftly to the slattern under the torch and his
accents were a healing effluence, "with my soothing, balmy oils, you can
cure yourself in three weeks, or your money back."
"I do' know haow you knew," faltered the woman. "I ain't told no one
yet. Kinder hoped it wa'n't thet, after all."
He brooded over her compassionately. "You've suffered needlessly. Soon
it would have been too late. The Vitalizing Mixture will keep up your
strength, while the soothing, balmy oils drive out the poison, and heal
up the sore. Three and a half for the two. Thank you. And is there some
suffering friend who you can lead to the light?"
The woman hesitated. She moved out to the edge of the crowd, and spoke
earnestly to a younger woman, whose comely face was scarred with the
chiseling of sleeplessness.
"Joe, he wouldn't let me," protested the younger woman. "He'd say 't was
a waste."
"But ye'll be cured," cried the other in exaltation. "Think of it. Ye'll
sleep again o' nights."
The woman's hand went to her breast, with a piteous gesture. "Oh, my
God! D'yeh think it could be true?" she cried.
"Accourse it's true! Didn't yeh hear whut he sayed? Would he dast swear
to it if it wasn't true?"
Tremulously the younger woman moved forward, clutching her shawl about
her.
"Could yeh sell me half a bottle to try it, sir?" she asked.
The vender shook his head. "Impossible, my dear madam. Contrary to my
fixed professional rule. But, I'll tell you what I will do. If, in three
days you're not better, you can have your money back."
She began painfully to count out her coins. Reaching impatiently for his
price, the Professor found himself looking straight into the eyes of the
well-dressed stranger.
"Are you going to take that woman's money?"
The question was low-toned but quite clear. An uneasy twitching beset
the corners of the professional brow. For just the fraction of a second,
the outstretched hand was stayed. Then:--
"That's what I am. And all the others I can get. Can I sell _you_ a
bottle?"
Behind the suavity there was the impudence of the man who is a little
alarmed, and a little angry because of the alarm.
"Why, yes," said the other coolly. "Some day I might like to know what's
in the stuff."
"Hand up your cash then. And here you are--Doctor. It _is_ 'Doctor,'
ain't it?"
"You've guessed it," returned the stranger.
[Illustration: HELP AND CURE ARE AT THEIR BECK AND CALL.]
At once the platform peddler became the opportunist orator again.
"A fellow practitioner, in my audience, ladies and gentlemen; and doing
me the honor of purchasing my cure. Sir," the splendid voice rose and
soared as he addressed his newest client, "you follow the noblest of
callings. My friends, I would rather heal a people's ills than determine
their destinies."
Giving them a moment to absorb that noble sentiment, he passed on to his
next source of revenue: Dyspepsia. He enlarged and expatiated upon its
symptoms until his subjects could fairly feel the grilling at the pit of
their collective stomach. One by one they came forward, the yellow-eyed,
the pasty-faced feeders on fried breakfasts, snatchers of hasty
noon-meals, sleepers on gorged stomachs. About them he wove the glamour
of his words, the arch-seducer, until the dollars fidgeted in their
pockets.
"Just one dollar the bottle, and pain is banished. Eat? You can eat a
cord of hickory for breakfast, knots and all, and digest it in an hour.
The Vitalizing Mixture does it."
Assorted ills came next. In earlier spring it would have been pneumonia
and coughs. Now it was the ailments that we have always with us:
backache, headache, indigestion and always the magnificent promise. So
he picked up the final harvest, gleaning his field.
"Now,"--the rotund voice sunk into the confidential, sympathetic
register, yet with a tone of saddened rebuke,--"there are topics that
the lips shrink from when ladies are present. But I have a word for you
young men. Young blood! Ah, young blood, and the fire of life! For that
we pay a penalty. Yet we must not overpay the debt. To such as wish my
private advice--_private_, I say, and sacredly confidential--" He broke
off and leaned out over the railing. "Thousands have lived to bless the
name of Professor Certain, and his friendship, at such a crisis;
thousands, my friends. To such, I shall be available for consultation
from nine to twelve to-morrow, at the Moscow Hotel. Remember the time
and place. Men only. Nine to twelve. And all under the inviolable seal
of my profession."
Some quality of unexpressed insistence in the stranger--or was it the
speaker's own uneasiness of spirit?--brought back the roving, brilliant
eyes to the square face below.
"A little blackmail on the side, eh?"
The words were spoken low, but with a peculiar, abrupt crispness. This,
then, was direct challenge. Professor Certain tautened. Should he accept
it, or was it safer to ignore this pestilent disturber? Craft and anger
thrust opposing counsels upon him. But determination of the issue came
from outside.
"Lemme through."
From the outskirts of the crowd a rawboned giant forced his way inward.
He was gaunt and unkempt as a weed in winter.
"Here's trouble," remarked a man at the front. "Allus comes with a
Hardscrabbler."
"What's a Hardscrabbler?" queried the well-dressed man.
"Feller from the Hardscrabble Settlement over on Corsica Lake. Tough
lot, they are. Make their own laws, when they want any; run their place
to suit themselves. Ain't much they ain't up to. Hoss-stealin',
barn-burnin', boot-leggin', an' murder thrown in when--"
"Be you the doctor was to Corsica Village two years ago?" The newcomer's
high, droning voice cut short the explanation.
"I was there, my friend. Testimonials and letters from some of your
leading citizens attest the work--"
"You give my woman morpheean." There was a hideous edged intonation in
the word, like the whine of some plaintive and dangerous animal.
"My friend!" The Professor's hand went forth in repressive deprecation.
"We physicians give what seems to us best, in these cases."
"A reg'lar doctor from Burnham seen her," pursued the Hardscrabbler, in
the same thin wail, moving nearer, but not again raising his eyes to the
other's face. Instead, his gaze seemed fixed upon the man's shining
expanse of waistcoat. "He said you doped her with the morpheean you give
her."
"So your chickens come home to roost, Professor," said the stranger, in
a half-voice.
"Impossible," declared the Professor, addressing the Hardscrabbler. "You
misunderstood him."
"They took my woman away. They took her to the 'sylum."
Foreboding peril, the people nearest the uncouth visitor had drawn away.
Only the stranger held his ground; more than held it, indeed, for he
edged almost imperceptibly nearer. He had noticed a fleck of red on the
matted beard, where the lip had been bitten into. Also he saw that the
Professor, whose gaze had so timorously shifted from his, was intent,
recognizing danger; intent, and unafraid before the threat.
"She used to cry fer it, my woman. Cry fer the morpheean like a baby."
He sagged a step forward. "She don't haff to cry no more. She's dead."
Whence had the knife leapt, to gleam so viciously in his hand? Almost as
swiftly as it was drawn, the healer had snatched one of the heavy
torch-poles from its socket. Almost, not quite. The fury leapt and
struck; struck for that shining waistcoat, upon which his regard had
concentrated, with an upward lunge, the most surely deadly blow known to
the knife-fighter. Two other movements coincided, to the instant. From
the curtain of cheesecloth the slight form of a boy shot upward, with
brandished arms; and the square-built man reached the Hardscrabbler's
jaw with a powerful and accurate swing. There was a scream of pain, a
roar from the crowd, and an answering bellow from the quack in midair,
for he had launched his formidable bulk over the rail, to plunge, a
crushing weight, upon the would-be murderer, who lay stunned on the
grass. For a moment the avenger ground him, with knees and fists; then
was up and back on the platform. Already the city man had gained the
flooring, and was bending above the child. There was a sprinkle of blood
on the bright, rough boards.
"Oh, my God! Boy-ee! Has he killed you?"
"No: he isn't killed," said the stranger curtly. "Keep the people back.
Lift down that torch."
The Professor wavered on his legs, grasping at the rail for support.
"You _are_ a doctor?" he gasped.
"Yes."
"Can you save him? Any money--"
"Set the torch here."
"Oh, Boyee, Boyee!" The great, dark man had dropped to his knees, his
face a mask of agony.
"Oh, the devil!" said the physician disgustedly. "You're no help. Clear
a way there, some of you, so that I can get him to the hotel." Then, to
the other. "Keep quiet. There's no danger. Only a flesh wound, but he's
fainted."
Carefully he swung the small form to his shoulder, and forced a way
through the crowd, the little girl, who had followed him to the
platform, composedly trotting along in his wake, while the
Hardscrabbler, moaning from the pain of two broken ribs, was led away by
a constable. Some distance behind, the itinerant wallowed like a drunken
man, muttering brilliant bargain offers of good conduct to Almighty God,
if "Boyee" were saved to him.
Once in the little hotel room, the physician went about his business
with swift decisiveness, aided by the mite of a girl, who seemed to know
by instinct where to be and what to do in the way of handling towels,
wash-basin, and the other simple paraphernalia required. Professor
Certain was unceremoniously packed off to the drug store for bandages.
When he returned the patient had recovered consciousness.
"Where's Dad?" he asked eagerly. "Did he hurt Dad?"
"No, Boyee." The big man was at the bedside in two long, velvety-footed
steps. Struck by the extenuation of the final "y" in the term, the
physician for the first time noted a very faint foreign accent, the
merest echo of some alien tongue. "Are you in pain, Boyee?"
"Not very much. It doesn't matter. Why did he want to kill you?"
"Never mind that, now," interrupted the physician. "We'll get that
scratch bound up, and then, young man, you'll go to sleep."
Pallid as a ghost, the itinerant held the little hand during the process
of binding the wound. "Boyee" essayed to smile, at the end, and closed
his eyes.
"Now we can leave him," said the physician. "Poppet, curl up in that
chair and keep watch on our patient while this gentleman and I have a
little talk in the outer room."
With a brisk nod of obedience and comprehension, the elfin girl took her
place, while the two men went out.
"What do I owe you?" asked Professor Certain, as soon as the door had
closed.
"Nothing."
"Oh, that won't do."
"It will have to do."
"Courtesy of the profession? But--"
The other laughed grimly, cutting him short. "So you call yourself an
M.D., do you?"
"Call myself? I am. Regular degree from the Dayton Medical College." He
sleeked down his heavy hair with a complacent hand.
The physician snorted. "A diploma-mill. What did you pay for your M.D.?"
"One hundred dollars, and it's as good as your four-year P. and S.
course or any other, for my purposes," retorted the other, with
hardihood. "What's more, I'm a member of the American Academy of
Surgeons, with a special diploma from St. Luke's Hospital of Niles,
Michigan, and a certificate of fellowship in the National Medical
Scientific Fraternity. Pleased to meet a brother practitioner." The
sneer was as palpable as it was cynical.
"You've got all the fake trimmings, haven't you? Do those things pay?"
"Do they! Better than your game, I'll bet. Name your own fee, now, and
don't be afraid to make it strong."
"I'm not in regular practice. I'm a naval surgeon on leave. Give your
money to those poor devils you swindled to-night. I don't like the smell
of it."
"Oh, you can't rile me," returned the quack. "I don't blame you regulars
for getting sore when you see us fellows culling out coin from under
your very noses, that you can't touch."
"Cull it, and welcome. But don't try to pass it on to me."
"Well, I'd like to do something for you in return for what you did for
my son."
"Would you? Pay me in words, then, if you will and dare. What is your
Vitalizing Mixture?"
"That's my secret."
"Liquor? Eh?"
"Some."
"Morphine?"
"A little."
"And the rest syrup and coloring matter, I suppose. A fine vitalizer!"
"It gets the money," retorted the other.
"And your soothing, balmy oils for cancer? Arsenious acid, I suppose, to
eat it out?"
"What if it is? As well that as anything else--for cancer."
"Humph! I happened to see a patient you'd treated, two years ago, by
that mild method. It wasn't cancer at all; only a benign tumor. Your
soothing oils burned her breast off, like so much fire. She's dead now."
"Oh, we all make mistakes."
"But we don't all commit murder."
"Rub it in, if you like to. You can't make me mad. Just the same, if it
wasn't for what you've done for Boyee--"
"Well, what about 'Boyee'?" broke in his persecutor quite undisturbed.
"He seems a perfectly decent sort of human integer."
The bold eyes shifted and softened abruptly. "He's the big thing in my
life."
"Bringing him up to the trade, eh?"
"No, damn you!"
"Damn me, if you like. But don't damn him. He seems to be a bit too good
for this sort of thing."
"To tell you the truth," said the other gloomily, "I was going to quit
at the end of this year, anyway. But I guess this ends it now. Accidents
like this hurt business. I guess this closes my tour."
"Is the game playing out?"
"Not exactly! Do you know what I took out of this town last night? One
hundred and ten good dollars. And to-morrow's consultation is good for
fifty more. That 'spiel' of mine is the best high-pitch in the
business."
"High-pitch?"
"High-pitching," explained the quack, "is our term for the talk, the
patter. You can sell sugar pills to raise the dead with a good-enough
high-pitch. I've done it myself--pretty near. With a voice like mine,
it's a shame to drop it. But I'm getting tired. And Boyee ought to have
schooling. So, I'll settle down and try a regular proprietary trade with
the Mixture and some other stuff I've got. I guess I can make printer's
ink do the work. And there's millions in it if you once get a start.
More than you can say of regular practice. I tried that, too, before I
took up itinerating." He grinned. "A midge couldn't have lived on my
receipts. By the way," he added, becoming grave, "what was your game in
cutting in on my 'spiel'?"
"Just curiosity."
"You ain't a government agent or a medical society investigator?"
The physician pulled out a card and handed it over. It read, "Mark
Elliot, Surgeon, U.S.N."
"Don't lose any sleep over me," he advised, then went to open the outer
door, in response to a knock.
A spectacled young man appeared. "They told me Professor Certain was
here," he said.
"What is it?" asked the quack.
"About that stabbing. I'm the editor of the weekly 'Palladium.'"
"Glad to see you, Mr. Editor. Always glad to see the Press. Of course
you won't print anything about this affair?"
The visitor blinked. "You wouldn't hardly expect me to kill the story."
"Not? Does anybody else but me give you page ads.?"
"Well, of course, we try to favor our advertisers," said the spectacled
one nervously.
"That's business! I'll be coming around again next year, if this thing
is handled right, and I think my increased business might warrant a
double page, then."
"But the paper will have to carry something about it. Too many folks saw
it happen."
"Just say that a crazy man tried to interrupt the lecture of Professor
Andrew Leon Certain, the distinguished medical savant, and was locked up
by the authorities."
"But the knifing. How is the boy?"
"Somebody's been giving you the wrong tip. There wasn't any knife,"
replied the Professor with a wink. "You may send me two hundred and
fifty copies of the paper. And, by the way, do what you can to get that
poor lunatic off easy, and I'll square the bills--with commission."
"I'll see the Justice first thing in the morning," said the editor with
enthusiasm. "Much obliged, Professor Certain. And the article will be
all right. I'll show you a proof. It mightn't be a bad notion for you to
drop in at the jail with me, and see Neal, the man that stab--that
interrupted the meeting, before he gets talking with any one else."
"So it mightn't. But what about my leaving, now?" Professor Certain
asked of the physician.
"Go ahead. I'll keep watch."
Shortly after the itinerant had gone out with the exponent of free and
untrammeled journalism, the boy awoke and looked about with fevered
anxiety for his father. The little nurse was beside him at once.
"You mustn't wiggle around," she commanded. "Do you want a drink?"
Gratefully he drank the water which she held to his lips.
"Where's my Dad?" he asked.
"He's gone out. He'll come back pretty soon. Lie down."
He sank back, fixing his eyes upon her. "Will you stay with me till he
comes?"
She nodded. "Does it hurt you much?" Her cool and tiny fingers touched
his forehead, soothingly. "You're very hot. I think you've got a little
fever."
"Don't take your hand away." His eyes closed, but presently opened
again. "I think you're very pretty," he said shyly.
"Do you? I like to have people think I'm pretty. Uncle Guardy scolds me
for it. Not really, you know, but just pretending. He says I'm vain."
"Is that your uncle, the gentleman that fixed my arm?"
"Yes. I call him Uncle Guardy because he's my guardian, too."
"I like him. He looks good. But I like you better. I like you a lot."
"Everybody does," replied the girl with dimpling complacency. "They
can't help it. It's because I'm me!"
For a moment he brooded. "Am I going to die?" he asked quite suddenly.
"Die? Of course not."
"Would you be sorry if I did?"
"Yes. If you died you couldn't like me any more. And I want everybody to
like me and think me pretty."
"I'm glad I'm not. It would be tough on Dad."
"My Uncle Guardy thinks your father is a bad man," said the fairy, not
without a spice of malice.
Up rose the patient from his pillow. "Then I hate him. He's a liar. My
Dad is the best man in the world." A brighter hue than fever burnt in
his cheeks, and his hand went to his shoulder. "I won't have his
bandages on me," he cried.
But she had thrown herself upon his arm, and pushed him back. "Oh,
don't! Please don't," she besought. "Uncle Guardy told me to keep you
perfectly quiet. And I've made you sit up--"
"What's all this commotion?" demanded Dr. Elliot brusquely, from the
door.
"You said my father was a bad man," cried the outraged patient.
"Lie back, youngster." The physician's hand was gentle, but very firm.
"I don't recall saying any such thing. Where did you get it?"
"I said you _thought_ he was a bad man," declared the midget girl. "I
know you do. You wouldn't have spoken back to him down in the square if
you hadn't."
Her uncle turned upon her a slow, cool, silent regard. "Esmé, you talk
too much," he said finally. "I'm a little ashamed of you, as a nurse.
Take your place there by the bedside. And you, young man, shut your ears
and eyes and go to sleep."
Hardly had the door closed behind the autocrat of the sick-room, when
his patient turned softly.
"You're crying," he accused.
"I'm not!" The denial was the merest gasp. The long lashes quivered with
tears.
"Yes, you are. He was mean to you."
"He's _never_ mean to me." The words came in a sobbing rush. "But
he--he--stopped loving me just for that minute. And when anybody I love
stops loving me I want to die!"
The boy's brown hands crept timidly to her arm. "I like you awfully," he
said. "And I'll never stop, not even for a minute!"
"Won't you?" Again she was the child coquette. "But we're going away
to-night. Perhaps you won't see me any more."
"Oh, yes, I shall. I'll look for you until I find you."
"I'll hide," she teased.
"That won't matter, little girl." He repeated the form softly and
drowsily. "Little girl; little girl; I'd do anything in the world for
you, little girl, if ever you asked me. Only don't go away while I'm
asleep."
Back of them the door had opened quietly and Professor Certain, who,
with Dr. Elliot, had been a silent spectator of the little drama, now
closed it again, withdrawing, on the further side, with his companion.
"He'll sleep now," said the physician. "That's all he needs. Hello!
What's this?"
In a corner of the sofa was a tiny huddle, outlined vaguely as human,
under a faded shawl. Drawing aside the folds, the quack disclosed a wild
little face, framed in a mass of glowing red hair.
"That Hardscrabbler's young 'un," he said. "She was crying quietly to
herself, in the darkness outside the jail, poor little tyke. So I picked
her up, and" (with a sort of tender awkwardness) "she was glad to come
with me. Seemed to kind of take to me. Kiddies generally do."
"Do they? That's curious."
"I suppose you think so," replied the quack, without rancor.
"What are you going to do with her?"
"I'll see, later. At present I'm going to keep her here with us. She's
only seven, and her mother's dead. Are you staying here to-night?"
"Got to. Missed my connection."
"Then at least you'll let me pay your hotel bill, if you won't take my
money."
"Why, yes: I suppose so," said the other grudgingly. "I'll look at the
boy in the morning. But he'll be all right. Only, don't take up your
itinerating again for a few days."
"I'm through, I tell you. Give me a growing city to settle in and I'll
go in for the regular proprietary manufacturing game. Know anything
about Worthington?"
"Yes."
"Pretty good, live town?"
"First-class, and not too critical, I suppose, to accept your business,"
said Dr. Elliot dryly. "I'm on my way there now for a visit. Well, I
must get my little girl."
The itinerant opened the door, looked, and beckoned. The boy lay on his
pillow, the girl was curled in her chair, both fast asleep. Their hands
were lightly clasped.
Dr. Elliot lifted his ward and carried her away. The itinerant,
returning to the Hardscrabbler girl, took her out to arrange the night's
accommodation for her. So, there slept that night under one roof and at
the charge of Professor Andrew L. Certain, five human beings who, long
years after, were destined to meet and mingle their fates, intricate,
intimate strands in the pattern of human weal and woe.
CHAPTER II
OUR LEADING CITIZEN
The year of grace, 1913, commended itself to Dr. L. André Surtaine as an
excellent time in which to be alive, rich, and sixty years old.
Thoroughly, keenly, ebulliently alive he was. Thoroughly rich, also; and
if the truth be told, rather ebulliently conscious of his wealth. You
could see at a glance that he had paid no usurious interest to Fate on
his success; that his vigor and zest in life remained to him
undiminished. Vitality and a high satisfaction with his environment and
with himself as well placed in it, radiated from his bulky and handsome
person; but it was the vitality that impressed you first: impressed and
warmed you; perhaps warned you, too, on shrewder observation. A gleaming
personality, this. But behind the radiance one surmised fire. Occasion
given, Dr. Surtaine might well be formidable.
The world had been his oyster to open. He had cleaved it wide.
Ill-natured persons hinted, in reference to his business, that he had
used poison rather than the knife wherewith to loosen the stubborn
hinges of the bivalve. Money gives back small echo to the cries of
calumny, however. And Dr. Surtaine's Certina, that infallible and
guaranteed blood-cure, eradicator of all known human ills, "famous
across the map of the world," to use one of its advertising phrases,
under the catchword of "Professor Certain's Certina, the Sure-Cure" (for
he preserved the old name as a trade-mark), had made a vast deal of
money for its proprietor. Worthington estimated his fortune at fifteen
millions, growing at the rate of a million yearly, and was not
preposterously far afield. In a city of two hundred thousand
inhabitants, claimed (one hundred and seventy-five thousand allowed by a
niggling and suspicious census), this is all that the most needy of
millionaires needs. It was all that Dr. Surtaine needed. He enjoyed his
high satisfaction as a hard-earned increment.
Something more than satisfaction beamed from his face this blustery
March noon as he awaited the Worthington train at a small station an
hour up the line. He fidgeted like an eager boy when the whistle
sounded, and before the cars had fairly come to a stop he was up the
steps of the sleeper and inside the door. There rose to meet him a tall,
carefully dressed and pressed youth, whose exclamation was evenly
apportioned between welcome and surprise.
"Dad!"
"Boy-ee!"
To the amusement of the other passengers, the two seized each other in a
bear-hug.
"Oof!" panted the big man, releasing his son. "That's the best thing
that's happened to me this year. George" (to the porter), "get me a
seat. Get us two seats together. Aren't any? Perhaps this gentleman,"
turning to the chair back of him, "wouldn't mind moving across the aisle
until we get to Worthington."
"Certainly not. Glad to oblige," said the stranger, smiling. People
usually were "glad to oblige" Dr. Surtaine whether they knew him or not.
The man inspired good will in others.
"It's nearly a year since I've set eyes on my son," he added in a voice
which took the whole car into his friendly confidence; "and it seems
like ten. How are you feeling, Hal? You look chirp as a cricket."
"Couldn't possibly feel better, sir. Where did you get on?"
"Here at State Crossing. Thought I'd come up and meet you. The office
got on my nerves this morning. Work didn't hold me worth a cent. I kept
figuring you coming nearer and nearer until I couldn't stand it, so I
banged down my desk, told my secretary that I was going to California on
the night boat and mightn't be back till evening, hung the scrap-basket
on the stenographer's ear when she tried to hold me up to sign some
letters, jumped out of the fifth-story window, and here I am. I hope
you're as tickled to see me as I am to see you."
The young man's hand went out, fell with a swift movement, to touch his
father's, and was as swiftly withdrawn again.
"Worthington's just waiting for you," the Doctor rattled on. "You're put
up at all the clubs. People you've never heard of are laying out dinners
and dances for you. You're a distinguished stranger; that's what you
are. Welcome to our city and all that sort of thing. I'd like to have a
brass band at the station to meet you, only I thought it might jar your
quiet European tastes. Eh? At that, I had to put the boys under bonds to
keep 'em from decorating the factory for you."
"You don't seem to have lost any of your spirit, Dad," said the junior,
smiling.
"Noticed that already, have you? Well, I'm holding my own, Boyee. Up to
date, old age hasn't scratched me with his claws to any noticeable
extent--is that the way it goes?--see 'Familiar Quotations.' I'm getting
to be a regular book-worm, Hal. Shakespeare, R.L.S., Kipling, Arnold
Bennett, Hall Caine--all the high-brows. And I _get_ 'em, too. Soak 'em
right in. I love it! Tell me, who's this Balzac? An agent was in
yesterday trying to make me believe that he invented culture. What about
him? I'm pretty hot on the culture trail. Look out, or I'll overhaul
you."
"You won't have to go very far or fast. I've got only smatterings." But
the boy spoke with a subdued complacency not wholly lost upon the shrewd
father.
"Not so much that you'll think Worthington dull and provincial?"
"Oh, I dare say I shall find it a very decent little place."
But here Hal touched another pride and loyalty, quite as genuine as that
which Dr. Surtaine felt for his son.
"Little place!" he cried. "Two hundred thousand of the livest people on
God's earth. A gen-u-wine American city if there ever was one."
"Evidently it suits you, sir."
"Couldn't suit better if I'd had it made to order," chuckled the Doctor.
"And I did pretty near make it over to order. It was a dead-and-alive
town when we opened up here. Didn't care much about my business, either.
Now we're the biggest thing in town. Why Certina is the cross-mark that
shows where Worthington is on the map. The business is sim-plee
BOOMING." The word exploded in rapture. "Nothing like it ever known in
the proprietary trade. Wait till you see the shop."
"That will be soon, won't it, sir? I think I've loafed quite long
enough."
"You're only twenty-five," his father defended him. "It isn't as if
you'd been idling. Your four years abroad have been just so much
capital. Educational capital, I mean. I've got plenty of the other kind,
for both of us. You don't need to go into the business unless you want
to."
"Being an American, I suppose I've got to go to work at something."
"Not necessarily."
"You don't want me to live on you all my life, though, I suppose."
"Well, I don't want you to want me to want you to," returned the other,
laughing. "But there's no hurry."
"To tell the truth, I'm rather bored with doing nothing. And if I can be
of any use to you in the business--"
"You're ready to resume the partnership," his father concluded the
sentence for him. "That was the foundation of it all; the old days when
I did the 'spieling' and you took in the dollars. How quick your little
hands were! Can you remember it? The smelly smoke of the torches, and
the shadows chasing each other across the crowds below. And to think
what has grown out of it. God, Boyee! It's a miracle," he exulted.
"It isn't very clear in my memory. I used to get pretty sleepy, I
remember," said the son, smiling.
"Poor Boyee! Sometimes I hated the life, for you. But there was nobody
to leave you with; and you were all I had. Anyway, it's turned out well,
hasn't it?"
"That remains to be seen for me, doesn't it? I'm rather at the start of
things."
"Most youngsters would be content with an unlimited allowance, and the
world for a playground."
"One gets tired of playing. _And_ of globe-trotting."
"Good! Do you think you can make Worthington feel like home?"
"How can I tell, sir? I haven't spent two weeks altogether in the place
since I entered college eight years ago."
"Did it ever strike you that I'd carefully planned to keep you away from
here, and that our periods of companionship have all been abroad or at
summer places?"
"Yes."
"You've never spoken of it."
"No."
"Good boy! Now I'll tell you why. I wanted to be absolutely established
before I brought you back here. Not in business, alone. That came long
ago. There have been obstacles, in other ways. They're all overcome.
To-day we come pretty near to being king-pins in this town, you and I,
Hal. Do you feel like a prince entering into his realm?"
"Rather more like a freshman entering college," said the other,
laughing. "It isn't the town, it's the business that I have misgivings
about."
"Misgivings? How's that?" asked the father quickly.
"What I can do in it."
"Oh, that. My doubts are whether it's the best thing for you."
"Don't you want me to go into it, Dad?"
"Of course I want you with me, Boyee. But--well, frank and flat, I don't
know whether it's genteel enough for you."
"Genteel?" The younger Surtaine repeated the distasteful adjective with
surprise.
"Some folks make fun of it, you know. It's the advertising that makes it
a fair mark. 'Certina,' they say. 'That's where he made his money.
Patent-medicine millions.' I don't mind it. But for you it's different."
"If the money is good enough for me to spend, it's good enough for me to
earn," said Hal Surtaine a little grandiloquently.
"Humph! Well, the business is a big success, and I want you to be a big
success. But that doesn't mean that I want to combine the two. Isn't
there anything else you've ever thought of turning to?"
"I've got something of a leaning toward your profession, Dad."
"My prof--oh, you mean medicine."
"Yes."
"Nothing in it. Doctors are a lot of prejudiced pedants and hypocrites.
Not one in a thousand is more than an inch wide. What started you on
that?"
"I hardly know. It was just a notion. I think the scientific and
sociological side is what appeals to me. But my interest is only
theoretical."
"That's very well for a hobby. Not as a profession. Here we are, half an
hour late, as usual."
The sudden and violent bite of the brakes, a characteristic operation of
that mummy among railroads, the Mid-State and Great Muddy River,
commonly known as the "Mid-and-Mud," flung forward in an involuntary
plunge the incautious who had arisen to look after their things. Hal
Surtaine found himself supporting the weight of a fortuitous citizen who
had just made his way up the aisle.
"Thank you," said the stranger in a dry voice. "You're the prodigal son
of whom we've heard such glowing forecast, I presume."
"Well met, Mr. Pierce," called Dr. Surtaine's jovial voice. "Yes, that's
my son, Harrington, you're hanging to. Hal, this is Mr. Elias M. Pierce,
one of the men who run Worthington."
Releasing his burden Hal acknowledged the introduction. Elias M. Pierce,
receding a yard or so into perspective, revealed himself as a spare,
middle-aged man who looked as if he had been hewn out of a block,
square, and glued into a permanent black suit. Under his palely sardonic
eye Hal felt that he was being appraised, and in none too amiable a
spirit.
"A favorite pleasantry of your father's, Mr. Surtaine," said Pierce.
"What became of Douglas? Oh, here he is."
A clean-shaven, rather floridly dressed man came forward, was introduced
to Hal, and inquired courteously whether he was going to settle down in
Worthington.
"Probably depends on how well he likes it," cut in the dry Mr. Pierce.
"You might help him decide. I'm sure William would be glad to have you
lunch with him one day this week at the Huron Club, Mr. Surtaine."
Somewhat surprised and a little annoyed at this curiously vicarious
suggestion of hospitality, the newcomer hesitated, although Douglas
promptly supported the offer. Before he had decided what to reply, his
father eagerly broke in.
"Yes, yes. You must go, Hal," he said, apparently oblivious of the fact
that he had not been included in the invitation.
"I'll try to be there, myself," continued Pierce, in a flat tone of
condescension. "Douglas represents me, however, not only legally but in
other matters that I'm too busy to attend to."
"Mr. Pierce is president of the Huron Club," explained Dr. Surtaine.
"It's our leading social organization. You'll meet our best business men
there." And Hal had no alternative but to accept.
Here William Douglas turned to speak to Dr. Surtaine. "The Reverend
Norman Hale has been looking for you. It is some minor hitch about
that Mission matter, I believe. Just a little diplomacy wanted. He
said he'd call to see you day after to-morrow."
"Meaning more money, I suppose," said Dr. Surtaine. Then, more loudly:
"Well, the business can stand it. All right. Send him along."
With Hal close on his heels he stepped from the car. But Douglas,
having the cue from his patron, took the younger man by the arm and
drew him aside.
"Come over and meet some of our fair citizens," he said. "Nothing like
starting right."
The Pierce motor car, very large, very quietly complete and elegant,
was waiting near at hand, and in it a prematurely elderly, subdued
nondescript of a woman, and a pretty, sensitive, sensuous type of
brunette, almost too well dressed. To Mrs. Pierce and Miss Kathleen
Pierce, Hal was duly presented, and by them graciously received. As
he stood there, bareheaded, gracefully at ease, smiling up into the
interested faces of the two ladies, Dr. Surtaine, passing to his own
car to await him, looked back and was warmed with pride and gratitude
for this further honorarium to his capital stock of happiness, for he
saw already in his son the assurance of social success, and, on the
hour's reckoning, summed him up. And since we are to see much of
Harrington Surtaine, in evil chance and good, and see him at times
through the eyes of that shrewd observer and capitalizer of men, his
father, the summing-up is worth our present heed, for all that it is
to be considerably modified in the mind of its proponent, as events
develop. This, then, is Dr. Surtaine's estimate of his beloved
"Boyee," after a year of separation.
"A little bit of a prig. A little bit of a cub. Just a _little_ mite
of a snob, too, maybe. But the right, solid, clean stuff underneath.
And my son, thank God! _My_ son all through."
CHAPTER III
ESMÉ
Hal saw her first, vivid against the lifeless gray of the cement wall,
as he turned away from the Pierce car. A little apart from the human
current she stood, still and expectant. As if to point her out as the
chosen of gods and men, the questing sun, bursting in triumph through a
cloud-rift, sent a long shaft of gold to encompass and irradiate her. To
the end, whether with aching heart or glad, Hal was to see her thus, in
flashing, recurrent visions; a slight, poised figure, all gracious
curves and tender consonances, with a cluster of the trailing arbutus,
that first-love of the springtide, clinging at her breast. The breeze
bore to him the faint, wild, appealing fragrance which is the very
breath and soul of the blossom's fairy-pink.
Half-turning, she had leaned a little, as a flower leans, to the warmth
of the sunlight, uplifting her face for its kiss. She was not beautiful
in any sense of regularity of outline or perfection of feature, so much
as lovely, with the lustrous loveliness which defiantly overrides the
lapse of line and proportion, and imperiously demands the homage of
every man born of woman. Chill analysis might have judged the mouth,
with its delicate, humorous quirk at the corners, too large; the chin
too broad, for all its adorable baby dimple; the line of the nose too
abrupt, the wider contours lacking something of classic exactitude. But
the chillest analysis must have warmed to enthusiasm at the eyes;
wide-set, level, and of a tawny hazel, with strange, wine-brown lights
in their depths, to match the brownish-golden sheen of the hair, where
the sun glinted from it. As it were a higher power of her physical
splendor, there emanated from the girl an intensity and radiance of joy
in being alive and lovely.
Involuntarily Hal Surtaine paused as he approached her. Her glance fell
upon him, not with the impersonal regard bestowed upon a casual
passer-by, but with an intent and brightening interest,--the thrill of
the chase, had he but known it,--and passed beyond him again. But in
that brief moment, the conviction was borne in upon him that sometime,
somewhere, he had looked into those eyes before. Puzzled and eager he
still stared, until, with a slight flush, she moved forward and passed
him. At the head of the stairs he saw her greet a strongly built,
grizzled man; and then became aware of his father beckoning to him from
the automobile.
"Bewitched, Hal?" said Dr. Surtaine as his son came to him.
"Was I staring very outrageously, sir?"
"Why, you certainly looked interested," returned the older man,
laughing. "But I don't think you need apologize to the young lady. She's
used to attention. Rather lives on it, I guess."
The tone jarred on Hal. "I had a queer, momentary feeling that I'd seen
her before," he said.
"Don't you recall where?"
"No," said Hal, startled. "_Do_ I know her?"
"Apparently not," taunted the other good-humoredly. "You should know.
Hers is generally considered a face not difficult to remember."
"Impossible to forget!"
"In that case it must be that you haven't seen her before. But you will
again. And, then look out, Boy-ee. Danger ahead!"
"How's that, sir?"
"You'll see for yourself when you meet her. Half of the boys in town are
crazy over her. She eats 'em alive. Can't you tell the man-killer type
when you see it?"
"Oh, that's all in the game, isn't it?" returned Hal lightly. "So long
as she plays fair. And she looks like a girl of breeding and standards."
"All of that. Esmé Elliot is a lady, so far as that goes. But--well, I'm
not going to prejudice you. Here she comes now."
"Who is it with her?"
"Her uncle, Dr. Elliot. He doesn't altogether approve of us--me, I
mean."
Uncle and niece were coming directly toward them now, and Hal watched
her approach with a thrill of delight in her motion. It was a study in
harmonies. She moved like a cloud before the wind; like a ship upon the
high seas; like the swirl of swift waters above hidden depths. As the
pair passed to their car, which stood next to Dr. Surtaine's, the girl
glanced up and nodded, with a brilliant smile, to the doctor, who
returned to the salutation an extra-gallant bow.
"You seem to be friends," commented Hal, somewhat amused.
"That was more for you than for me. But the fair Esmé can always spare
one of those smiles for anything that wears trousers."
Hal moved uneasily. He felt a sense of discord. As he cast about for a
topic to shift to, the Elliot car rolled ahead slowly, and once more he
caught the woodsy perfume of the pink bloom. Strangely and satisfyingly
to his quickened perceptions, it seemed to express the quality of the
wearer. Despite her bearing of worldly self-assurance, despite the
atmosphere of modishness about her, there was in her charm something
wild and vivid, vernal and remote, like the arbutus which, alone among
flowers, keeps its life-secret virgin and inviolate, resisting all
endeavors to make it bloom except in its own way and in its own chosen
places.
CHAPTER IV
THE SHOP
Certina had found its first modest home in Worthington on a side street.
As the business grew, the staid tenement which housed it expanded and
drew to itself neighboring buildings, until it eventually gave way to
the largest, finest, and most up-to-date office edifice in the city.
None too large, fine, or modern was this last word in architecture for
the triumphant nostrum and the minor medical enterprises allied to it.
For though Certina alone bore the name and spread the fame and features
of its inventor abroad in the land, many lesser experiments had bloomed
into success under the fertilizing genius of the master-quack.
Inanimate machinery, when it runs sweetly, gives forth a definite
tone, the bee-song of work happily consummated. So this great human
mechanism seemed, to Harrington Surtaine as he entered the realm of
its activities, moving to music personal to itself. Through its wide
halls he wandered, past humming workrooms, up spacious stairways,
resonant to the tread of brisk feet, until he reached the fifth floor
where cluster the main offices. Here through a succession of open
doors he caught a glimpse of the engineer who controlled all these
lively processes, leaning easily back from his desk, fresh, suavely
groomed, smiling, an embodiment of perfect satisfaction. Before Dr.
Surtaine lay many sheaves of paper, in rigid order. A stenographer sat
in a far corner, making notes. From beyond a side door came the
precise, faint clicking of a typewriter. The room possessed an
atmosphere of calm and poise; but not of restfulness. At once and
emphatically it impressed the visitor with a sense that it was a place
where things were done, and done efficiently.
Upon his son's greeting, Dr. Surtaine whirled in his chair.
"Come down to see the old slave at work, eh?" he said.
"Yes, sir." Hal's hand fell on the other's shoulder, and the Doctor's
fingers went up to it for a quick pressure. "I thought I'd like to see
the wheels go 'round."
"You've come to the right spot. This is the good old cash-factory, and
yours truly is the man behind the engine. The State, I'm It, as Napoleon
said to Louis the Quince. Where McBeth sits is the head of the table."
"In other words, a one-man business."
"That's the secret. There's nothing in this shop that I can't do, and
don't do, every now and then, just to keep my hand in. I can put more
pull into an ad. to-day than the next best man in the business. Modesty
isn't my besetting sin, you see, Hal."
"Why should it be? Every brick in this building would give the lie to
it."
"Say every frame on these four walls," suggested Dr. Surtaine with an
expansive gesture.
Following this indication, Hal examined the decorations. On every side
were ordinary newspaper advertisements, handsomely mounted, most of them
bearing dates on brass plates. Here and there appeared a circular, or a
typed letter, similarly designated.
Above Dr. Surtaine's desk was a triple setting, a small advertisement, a
larger one, and a huge full-newspaper-page size, each embodying the same
figure, that of a man half-bent over, with his hand to his back and a
lamentable expression on his face.
Certain strongly typed words fairly thrust themselves out of the
surrounding print: "Pain--Back--Take Care--Means Something--Your
Kidneys." And then in dominant presentment--
CERTINA
CURES.
"What do you think of Old Lame-Boy?" asked Dr. Surtaine.
"From an æsthetic point of view?"
"Never mind the æsthetics of it. 'Handsome is as handsome does.'"
"What has that faded beauty done, then?"
"Carried many a thousand of our money to bank for us, Boyee. That's the
ad. that made the business."
"Did you design it?"
"Every word and every line, except that I got a cheap artist to touch up
the drawing a little. Then I plunged. When that copy went out, we had
just fifty thousand dollars in the world, you and I. Before it had been
running three months, I'd spent one hundred thousand dollars more than
we owned, in the newspapers, and had to borrow money right and left to
keep the manufacturing and bottling plant up to the orders. It was a
year before we could see clear sailing, and by that time we were pretty
near quarter of a million to the good. Talk about ads. that pull! It
pulled like a mule-team and a traction engine and a fifty-cent painless
dentist all in one. I'm still using that copy, in the kidney season."
"Do kidneys have seasons?"
"Kidney troubles do."
"I'd have thought such diseases wouldn't depend on the time of year."
"Maybe they don't, actually," admitted the other. "Maybe they're just
crowded out of the public mind by the pressure of other sickness in
season, like rheumatism in the early winter, and pneumonia in the late.
But there's no doubt that the kidney season comes in with the changes
of the spring. That's one of my discoveries, too. I tell you, Boyee,
I've built my success on things like that. It's psychology: that's what
it is. That's what you've got to learn, if you're going into the
concern."
"I'm ready, Dad. It sounds interesting. More so than I'd have thought."
"Interesting! It's the very heart and core of the trade." Dr. Surtaine
leaned forward, to tap with an earnest finger on his son's knee, a
picture of expository enthusiasm. "Here's the theory. You see, along
about March or April people begin to get slack-nerved and out-of-sortsy.
They don't know what ails 'em, but they think there's something. Well,
one look at that ad. sets 'em wondering if it isn't their kidneys. After
wonder comes worry. He's the best little worrier in the trade, Old
Lame-Boy is. He just pesters folks into taking proper care of
themselves. They get Certina, and we get their dollars. And they get
their money's worth, too," he added as an afterthought for Hal's
benefit, "for it's a mighty good thing to have your kidneys tonicked up
at this time of year."
"But, Dad," queried Hal, with an effort of puzzled reminiscence, "in the
old days Certina wasn't a kidney remedy, was it?"
"Not specially. It's always been _good_ for the kidneys. Good for
everything, for that matter. Besides, the formula's been changed."
"Changed? But the formula's the vital thing, isn't it?"
"Yes, yes. Of course. Certainly it's the vital thing: certainly. But,
you see,--well,--new discoveries in medicine and that sort of thing."
"You've put new drugs in?"
"Yes: I've done that. Buchu, for instance. That's supposed to be good
for the kidneys. Dropped some things out, too. Morphine got sort of a
bad name. The muckrakers did that with their magazine articles."
"Of course I don't pretend to know about such things, Dad. But morphine
seems a pretty dangerous thing for people to take indiscriminately."
"Well, it's out. There ain't a grain of it in Certina to-day."
"I'm glad of it."
"Oh, I don't know. It's useful in its place. For instance, you can't run
a soothing-syrup without it. But when the Pure Food Law compelled us to
print the amount of morphine on the label, I just made up my mind that
I'd have no government interference in the Certina business, so I
dropped the drug."
"Did the law hurt our trade much?"
"Not so far as Certina goes. I'm not even sure it didn't help. You see,
now we can print 'Guaranteed under the U.S. Food and Drugs Act' on every
bottle. In fact we're required to."
"What does the guaranty mean?"
"That whatever statement may be on the label is accurate. That's all.
But the public takes it to mean that the Government officially
guarantees Certina to do everything we claim for it," chuckled Dr.
Surtaine. "It's a great card. We've done more business under the new
formula than we ever did under the old."
"What is the formula now?"
"Prying into the secrets of the trade?" chuckled the elder man.
"But if I'm coming into the shop, to learn--"
"Right you are, Boyee," interrupted his father buoyantly. "There's the
formula for making profits." He swept his hand about in a spacious
circle, grandly indicating the advertisement-bedecked walls. "There's
where the brains count. Come along," he added, jumping up; "let's take a
turn around the joint."
Every day, Dr. Surtaine explained to his son, he made it a practice to
go through the entire plant.
"It's the only way to keep a business up to mark. Besides, I like to
know my people."
Evidently he did know his people and his people knew and strongly liked
him. So much Hal gathered from the offhand and cheerily friendly
greetings which were exchanged between the head of the vast concern and
such employees, important or humble, as they chanced to meet in their
wanderings. First they went to the printing-plant, the Certina Company
doing all its own printing; then to what Dr. Surtaine called "the
literary bureau."
"Three men get out all our circulars and advertising copy," he explained
in an aside. "One of 'em gets five thousand a year; but even so I have
to go over all his stuff. If I could teach him to write ads. like I do
it myself, I'd pay him ten thousand--yes, twenty thousand. I'd have to,
to keep him. The circulars they do better; but I edit those, too. What
about that name for the new laxative pills, Con? Hal, I want you to meet
Mr. Conover, our chief ad.-man."
Conover, a dapper young man with heavy eye-glasses, greeted Hal with
some interest, and then turned to the business in hand.
"What'd you think of 'Anti-Pellets'?" he asked. "Anti, opposed to, you
know. In the sub-line, tell what they're opposed to: indigestion,
appendicitis, and so on."
"Don't like it," returned Dr. Surtaine abruptly. "Anti-Ralgia's played
that to death. Lemme think, for a moment."
Down he plumped into Conover's chair, seized a pencil and made tentative
jabs at a sheet of paper. "Pellets, pellets," he muttered. Then, in a
kind of subdued roar, "I've got it! I've got it, Con! 'Pro-Pellets.'
Tell people what they're for, not what they're against. Besides, the
name has got the idea of pro-pulsion. See? Pro-Pellets, pro-pel!" His
big fist shot forward like a piston-rod. "Just the idea for a laxative.
Eh?"
"Fine!" agreed Conover, a little ruefully, but with genuine
appreciation of the fitness of the name. "I wish I'd thought of it."
"You did--pretty near. Anyway, you made me think of it. Anti-Pellets,
Pro-Pellets: it's just one step. Like as not you'd have seen it yourself
if I hadn't butted in. Now, go to it, and figure out your series on
that."
With kindly hands he pushed Conover back into his chair, gave him a
hearty pat on the shoulder, and passed on. Hal began to have an inkling
of the reasons for his father's popularity.
"Have we got other medicines besides Certina?" he asked.
"Bless you, yes! This little laxative pills business I took over from a
concern that didn't have the capital to advertise it. Across the hall
there is the Sure Soother department. That's a teething syrup: does
wonders for restless babies. On the floor below is the Cranicure Mixture
for headaches, Rub-it-in Balm for rheumatism and bruises, and a couple
of small side issues that we're not trying to push much. We're handling
Stomachine and Relief Pills from here, but the pills are made in
Cincinnati, and we market 'em under another trade name."
"Stomachine is for stomach troubles, I assume," said Hal. "What are the
Relief Pills?"
"Oh, a female remedy," replied his father carelessly. "Quite a booming
little trade, too. Take a look at the Certina collection of
testimonials."
In a room like a bank vault were great masses of testimonial letters,
all listed and double-catalogued by name and by disease.
"Genuine. Provably genuine, every one. There's romance in some of 'em.
And gratitude; good Lord! Sometimes when I look 'em over, I wonder I
don't run for President of the United States on a Certina platform."
From the testimonial room they went to the art department where Dr.
Surtaine had some suggestions to make as to bill-board designs.
"You'll never get another puller like Old Lame-Boy," Hal heard the head
designer say with a chuckle, and his father reply: "If I could I'd start
another proprietary as big as Certina."
"Where does that lead to?" inquired Hal, as they approached a side
passage sloping slightly down, and barred by a steel door.
"The old building. The manufacturing department is over there."
"Compounding the medicine, you mean?"
"Yes. Bottling and shipping, too."
"Aren't we going through?"
"Why, yes: if you like. You won't find much to interest you, though."
Nor, to Hal's surprise, did Dr. Surtaine himself seem much concerned
with this phase of the business. Apparently his hand was not so close in
control here as in the other building. The men seemed to know him less
well.
"All this pretty well runs itself," he explained negligently.
"Don't you have to keep a check on the mixing, to make sure it's right?"
"Oh, they follow the formula. No chance for error."
They walked amidst chinking trucks, some filled with empty, some with
filled and labeled bottles, until they reached the carton room where
scores of girls were busily inserting the bottles, together with folded
circulars and advertising cards, into pasteboard boxes. At the far end
of this room a pungent, high-spiced scent, as of a pickle-kitchen with a
fortified odor underlying it, greeted the unaccustomed nose of the
neophyte.
"Good!" he sniffed. "How clean and appetizing it smells!"
Enthusiasm warmed the big man's voice once more.
"Just what it is, too!" he exclaimed. "Now you've hit on the second big
point in Certina's success. It's easy to take. What's the worst thing
about doctors' doses? They're nasty. The very thought of 'em would gag a
cat. Tell people that here's a remedy better than the old medicine and
pleasant to the taste, and they'll take to it like ducks to water.
Certina is the first proprietary that ever tasted good. Next to Old
Lame-Boy, it's my biggest idea."
"Are we going into the mixing-room?" asked his son.
"If you like. But you'll see less than you smell."
So it proved. A heavy, wet, rich vapor shrouded the space about a huge
cauldron, from which came a sound of steady plashing. Presently an
attendant gnome, stripped to the waist, appeared, nodded to Dr.
Surtaine, called to some one back in the mist, and shortly brought Hal a
small glass brimming with a pale-brown liquid.
"Just fresh," he said. "Try it."
"My kidneys are all right," protested Hal. "I don't need any medicine."
"Take it for a bracer. It won't hurt you," urged the gnome.
Hal looked at his father, and, at his nod, put his lips to the glass.
"Why, it tastes like spiced whiskey!" he cried.
"Not so far out of the way. Columbian spirits, caramel, cinnamon and
cardamom, and a touch of the buchu. Good for the blues. Finish it."
Hal did so and was aware of an almost instantaneous glow.
"Strong stuff, sir," he said to his father as they emerged into a
clearer atmosphere.
"They like it strong," replied the other curtly. "I give 'em what they
like."
The attendant gnome followed. "Mr. Dixon was looking for you, Dr.
Surtaine. Here he comes, now."
"Dixon's our chief chemist," explained Dr. Surtaine as a shabby,
anxious-looking man ambled forward.
"We're having trouble with that last lot of cascara, sir," said he
lugubriously.
"In the Number Four?"
"Yes, sir. It don't seem to have any strength."
"Substitute senna." So offhand was the tone that it sounded like a
suggestion rather than an order.
As the latter, however, the chemist contentedly took it.
"It'll cost less," he observed; "and I guess it'll do the work just as
well."
To Hal it seemed a somewhat cavalier method of altering a medical
formula. But his mind, accustomed to easy acceptance of the business
which so luxuriously supplied his wants, passed the matter over lightly.
"First-rate man, Dixon," remarked Dr. Surtaine as they passed along.
"College-bred, and all that. Boozes, though. I only pay him twenty-five
a week, and he's mighty glad to get it."
On the way back to the offices, they traversed the checking and
accounting rooms, the agency department, the great rows of desks whereat
the shipping and mailing were looked after, and at length stopped before
the door of a small office occupied by a dozen women. One of these, a
full-bosomed, slender, warm-skinned girl with a wealth of deep-hued,
rippling red hair crowning her small, well-poised head, rose and came to
speak to Dr. Surtaine.
"Did you get the message I sent you about Letter Number Seven?" she
asked.
"Hello, Milly," greeted the presiding genius, pleasantly. "Just what was
that about Number Seven?"
"It isn't getting results."
"No? Let's see it." Dr. Surtaine was as interested in this as he had
been casual about the drug alteration.
"I don't think it's personal enough," pursued the girl, handing him a
sheet of imitation typewriter print.
"Oh, you don't," said her employer, amused. "Maybe you could better it."
"I have," said the girl calmly. "You always tell us to make
suggestions. Mine are on the back of the paper."
"Good for you! Hal, here's the prettiest girl in the shop, and about the
smartest. Milly, this is my boy."
The girl looked up at Hal with a smile and brightened color. He was
suddenly interested and appreciative to see to what a vivid prettiness
her face was lighted by the raised glance of her swift, gray-green eyes.
"Are you coming into the business, Mr. Surtaine?" she asked composedly,
and with almost as proprietary an air as if she had said "our business."
"I don't know. Is it the sort of business you would advise a rather lazy
person to embark in, Miss--"
"Neal," she supplied; adding, with an illustrative glance around, upon
her busy roomful, all sorting and marking correspondence, "You see, I
only give advice by letter."
She turned away to answer one of the subordinates, and, at the same
time, Dr. Surtaine was called aside by a man with a shipping-bill.
Looking down the line of workers, Hal saw that each one was simply
opening, reading, and marking with a single stroke, the letters from a
distributing groove. To her questioner Milly Neal was saying, briskly:
"That's Three and Seven. Can't you see, she says she has spots before
her eyes. That's stomach. And the lameness in the side is kidneys. Mark
it 'Three pass to Seven.' There's a combination form for that."
"What branch of the work is this?" asked Hal, as she lifted her eyes to
his again.
"Symptom correspondence. This is the sorting-room."
"Please explain. I'm a perfect greenhorn, you know."
"You've seen the ads. of course. Nobody could help seeing them. They all
say, 'Write to Professor Certain'--the trade name, you know. It's the
regular stock line, but it does bring in the queries. Here's the
afternoon mail, now."
Hundreds upon hundreds of letters came tumbling from a bag upon the
receiving-table. All were addressed to "Prof." or "Dr." Certain.
"How can my father hope to answer all those?" cried Hal.
The girl surveyed him with a quaint and delicious derision. "He? You
don't suppose he ever sees them! What are _we_ here for?"
"You do the answering?"
"Practically all of it, by form-letters turned out in the printing
department. For instance, Letter One is coughs and colds; Two,
headaches; Three, stomach; and so on. As soon as a symp-letter is read
the girl marks it with the form-letter number, underscores the address,
and it goes across to the letter room where the right answer is mailed,
advising the prospect to take Certina. Orders with cash go direct to the
shipping department. If the symp-writer wants personal advice that the
form-letters don't give, I send the inquiry upstairs to Dr. De Vito.
He's a regular graduate physician who puts in half his time as our
Medical Adviser. We can clear up three thousand letters a day, here."
"I can readily see that my father couldn't attend to them personally,"
said Hal, smiling.
"And it's just as good this way. Certina is what the prospects want and
need. It makes no difference who prescribes it. This is the Chief's own
device for handling the correspondence."
"The Chief?"
"Your father. We all call him that, all the old hands."
Hal's glance skimmed over the fresh young face, and the brilliant eyes.
"You wouldn't call yourself a very old hand, Miss Neal."
"Seven years I've worked for the Chief, and I never want to work in a
better place. He's been more than good to me."
"Because you've deserved it, young woman," came the Doctor's voice from
behind Hal. "That's the one and only reason. I'm a flint-livered old
divvle to folks that don't earn every cent of their wages."
"Don't you believe him, Mr. Surtaine," controverted the girl, earnestly.
"When one of my girls came down last year with tuber--"
"Whoof! Whoof! Whoof!" interrupted the big man, waving his hands in the
air. "Stop it! This is no experience meeting. Milly, you're right about
this letter. It's the confidential note that's lacking. It'll work up
all right along the line of your suggestion. I'll have to send Hal to
you for lessons in the business."
"Miss Neal would have to be very patient with my stupidity."
"I don't think it would be hard to be patient with you," she said
softly; and though her look was steady he saw the full color rise in her
cheeks, and, startled, felt an answering throb in his pulses.
"But you mustn't flirt with her, Hal," warned the old quack, with a
joviality that jarred.
Uncomfortably conscious of himself and of the girl's altered expression,
Hal spoke a hasty word or two of farewell, and followed his father out
into the hallway. But the blithe and vivid femininity of the young
expert plucked at his mind. At the bend of the hall, he turned with half
a hope and saw her standing at the door. Her look was upon him, and it
seemed to him to be both troubled and wistful.
CHAPTER V
THE SCION
To Harrington Surtaine, life had been a game with easy rules. Certain
things one must not do. Decent people didn't do them. That's all there
was to that. In matters of morals and conduct, he was guided by a
natural temperance and an innate sense of responsibility to himself.
Difficult questions had not come up in his life. Consequently he had not
found the exercise of judgment troublesome. His tendency, as regarded
his own affairs, was to a definite promptness of decision, and there was
an end of the matter. Others he seldom felt called upon to judge, but if
the instance were ineluctable, he was prone to an amiable generosity.
Ease of living does not breed in the mind a strongly defined philosophy.
All that young Mr. Surtaine required of his fellow beings was that they
should behave themselves with a due and respectable regard to the rights
of all in general and of himself in particular--and he would do the same
by them. Rather a pallid attenuation of the Golden Rule; but he had thus
far found it sufficient to his existence.
Into this peaceful world-scheme intruded, now, a disorganizing factor.
He had brought it home with him from his visit to the "shop." An
undefined but pervasive distaste for the vast, bustling, profitable
Certina business formed the nucleus of it. As he thought it over that
night, amidst the heavily ornate elegance of the great bedroom, which,
with its dressing-room and bath, his father had set aside for his use in
the Surtaine mansion, he felt in the whole scheme of the thing a vague
offense. The air which he had breathed in those spacious halls of trade
had left a faintly malodorous reminiscence in his nostrils.
One feature of his visit returned insistently to his mind: the contrast
between the semi-contemptuous carelessness exhibited by his father
toward the processes of compounding the cure and the minute and
insistent attention given to the methods of expounding it. Was the
advertising really of so much more import than the medicine itself? If
so, wasn't the whole affair a matter of selling shadow rather than
substance?
But it is not in human nature to view with too stern a scrutiny a
business which furnishes one's easeful self with all the requisites of
luxury, and that by processes of almost magic simplicity. Hal reflected
that all big businesses doubtless had their discomforting phases. He had
once heard a lecturing philosopher express a doubt as to whether it were
possible to defend, ethically, that prevalent modern phenomenon, the
millionaire, in any of his manifestations. By the counsel of perfection
this might well be true. But who was he to judge his father by such
rigorous standards? Of the medical aspect of the question he could form
no clear judgment. To him the patent medicine trade was simply a part of
the world's business, like railroading, banking, or any other form of
merchandising. His own precocious commercial experience, when, as a boy,
he had played his little part in the barter and trade, had blinded him
on that side. Nevertheless, his mind was not impregnably fortified. Old
Lame-Boy, bearer of dollars to the bank, loomed up, a disturbing figure.
Then, from a recess in his memory, there popped out the word "genteel."
His father had characterized the Certina business as being, possibly,
not sufficiently "genteel" for him. He caught at the saving suggestion.
Doubtless that was the trouble. It was the blatancy of the business, not
any evil quality inherent in it, which had offended him. Kindest and
gentlest of men and best of fathers as Dr. Surtaine was, he was not a
paragon of good taste; and his business naturally reflected his
personality. Even this was further than Hal had ever gone before in
critical judgment. But he seized upon the theory as a defense against
further thought, and, having satisfied his self-questionings with this
sop, he let his mind revert to his trip through the factory. It paused
on the correspondence room and its attractive forewoman.
"She seemed a practical little thing," he reflected. "I'll talk to her
again and get her point of view." And then he wondered, rather amusedly,
how much of this self-suggestion arose from a desire for information,
and how much was inspired by a memory of her haunting, hungry eyes.
On the following morning he kept away from the factory, lunched at the
Huron Club with William Douglas, Elias M. Pierce, who had found time to
be present, and several prominent citizens whom he thought quite dully
similar to each other; and afterward walked to the Certina Building to
keep an appointment with its official head.
"Been feeding with our representative citizens, eh?" his father greeted
him. "Good! Meantime the Old Man grubbed along on a bowl of milk and a
piece of apple pie, at a hurry-up lunch-joint. Good working diet, for
young or old. Besides, it saves time."
"Are you as busy as all that, Dad?"
"Pretty busy this morning, because I've had to save an hour for you out
of this afternoon. We'll take it right now if you're ready."
"Quite ready, sir."
"Hal, where's Europe?"
"Europe? In the usual place on the map, I suppose."
"You didn't bring it back with you, then?"
"Not a great deal of it. They mightn't have let it through the customs."
Dr. Surtaine snapped a rubber band from a packet of papers lying on his
desk. "Considering that you seem to have bought it outright," he said,
twinkling, "I thought you might tell me what you intend doing with it.
There are the bills."
"Have I gone too heavy, sir?" asked Hal. "You've never limited me, and I
supposed that the business--"
"The business," interrupted his father arrogantly, "could pay those
bills three times over in any month. That isn't the point. The point is
that you've spent something more than forty-eight thousand dollars this
last year."
Hal whistled ruefully. "Call it an even fifty," he said. "I've made a
little, myself."
"No! Have you? How's that?"
"While I was in London I did a bit of writing; sketches of queer places
and people and that sort of thing, and had pretty good luck selling 'em.
One fellow I know there even offered me a job paragraphing. That's like
our editorial writing, you know."
"Fine! That makes me feel easier. I was afraid you might be going soft,
with so much money to spend."
"How I ever spent that much--"
"Never mind that. It's gone. However, we'll try another basis. I'd
thought of an allowance, but I don't quite like the notion. Hal, I'm
going to give you your own money."
"My own money? I didn't know that I had any."
"Well, you have."
"Where did I get it?"
"From our partnership. From the old days on the road."
"Rather an intangible fortune, isn't it?"
"That old itinerant business was the nucleus of the Certina of to-day.
You had a profit-sharing right in that. You've still got it--in this.
Hal, I'm turning over to you to-day half a million dollars."
"That's a lot of money, Dad," said the younger man soberly.
"The interest doesn't come to fifty thousand dollars a year, though."
"More than half; and that's more than plenty."
"Well, I don't know. We'll try it. At any rate, it's your own. Plenty
more where it comes from, if you need extra."
"I shan't. It's more than generous of you--"
"Not a bit of it. No more than just, Boyee. So let the thanks go."
"All right, sir. But--you know how I feel about it."
"I guess I know just about how you and I feel toward each other on
anything that comes up between us, Boyee." There was a grave gentleness
in Dr. Surtaine's tone. "Well, there are the papers," he added, more
briskly. "I haven't put all your eggs in one basket, you see."
Going over the certificates Hal found himself possessed of fifty
thousand dollars in the stock of the Mid-State and Great Muddy Railroad:
an equal sum in the Security Power Products Company; twenty-five
thousand each in the stock of the Worthington Trust Company and the
Remsen Savings Bank; one hundred thousand in the Certina Company, and
fifty thousand in three of its subsidiary enterprises. Besides this, he
found five check-books in the large envelope which contained his riches.
"What are these, Dad?" he asked.
"Cash on deposit in local and New York banks. You might want to do some
investing of your own. Or possibly you might see some business
proposition you wanted to buy into."
"I see some Security Power Products Company certificates. What is that?"
"The local light, heat, and power corporation. It pays ten per cent.
Certina never pays less than twenty. The rest is all good for six, at
least and the Mid-and-Mud averages eight. You've got upwards of
thirty-seven thousand income there, not counting your deposits. While
you're looking about, deciding what you're going to do, it'll be your
own money and nobody else's that you're spending."
"Do you think many fathers would do this sort of thing, Dad?" said Hal
warmly.
"Any sensible one would. I don't want to own you, Boyee. I want you to
own yourself. And to make yourself," he added slowly.
"If I can make myself like you, Dad--"
"Oh, I'm a good-enough piece of work, for my day and time," laughed the
father. "But I want a fine finish on you. While you're looking around
for your life-work, how about doing a little unpaid job for me?"
"Anything," cried Hal. "Just try me."
"Do you know what an Old Home Week is?"
"Only what I read in to-day's paper announcing the preliminary
committee."
"That gave you enough idea. We make a big thing of Old Home Week in
Worthington. This year it will be particularly big because it's the
hundredth anniversary of the city. The President of the United States
will be here. I'm to be chairman of the general committee, and I want
you for my secretary."
"Nothing I'd like better, sir."
"Good! All the moneyed men in town will be on the committee. The work
will put you in touch with the people who count. Well, that settles our
business. Good luck to you in your independence, Boyee." He touched a
bell. "Any one waiting to see me, Jim?" he asked the attendant.
"Yes, sir. The Reverend Norman Hale."
"Send him in."
"Shall I go, Dad?" asked Hal.
"Oh, you might take a little ramble around the shop. Go anywhere. Ask
any questions of anybody. They all know you."
At the door, Hal passed a tall, sinewy young man with heavy brows and
rebellious hair. A slight, humorous uptilt to his mouth relieved the
face of impassivity and saved it from a too formal clericalism. The
visitor was too deeply concerned with some consideration of his inner
self to more than glance at Hal, who heard Dr. Surtaine's hearty
greeting through the closing door.
"Glad to see you, Mr. Hale. Take a chair."
The visitor bowed gravely and sat down.
"You've come to see me about--?"
"Your subscription to the East End Church Club Fund."
"I am heartily in sympathy with the splendid work your church is doing
in the--er--less salubrious parts of our city," said Dr. Surtaine.
"Doubtless," returned the young clergyman dryly.
"Seems to be saving his wind," thought Dr. Surtaine, a little uneasily.
"I suppose it's a question," he continued, aloud, "of the disposition of
the sum--"
"No: it is not."
If this bald statement required elucidation or expansion, its proponent
didn't seem to realize the fact. He contemplated with minute scrutiny a
fly which at that moment was alighting (in about the proportion of the
great American eagle) upon the pained countenance of Old Lame-Boy.
"Well?" queried the other, adding to himself, "What the devil ails the
man!"
The scrutinized fly rose, after the manner of its kind, and (now reduced
to normal scale) touched lightly in its exploratory tour upon Dr.
Surtaine's domed forehead. Following it thus far, the visitor's gaze
rested. Dr. Surtaine brushed off the insect. He could not brush off the
regard. Under it and his caller's continued silence he grew fidgety.
"While I'm very glad," he suggested, "to give you what time you need--"
"I've come here because I wanted to have this thing out with you face to
face."
"Well, have it out," returned the other, smiling but wary.
The young clergyman drew from his pocket a folded newspaper page to
which was pinned an oblong of paper. This he detached and extended to
the other.
"What's that?" asked the doctor, making no motion to receive it, for he
instantly recognized it.
"Your check."
"You're returning it?"
"Without thanks."
"You mean to turn down two thousand dollars!" demanded the other in slow
incredulity.
"Exactly."
"Why?"
"Is that question asked in good faith?"
"It is."
"Then you haven't seen the letter written by the superintendent of our
Sunday School to the Certina Company."
"What kind of a letter?"
"A testimonial letter--for which your two thousand dollars is payment, I
suppose."
"Two thousand for a church testimonial!" Dr. Surtaine chuckled at his
caller's innocence. "Why, I wouldn't pay that for a United States
Senator. Besides," he added virtuously, "Certina doesn't buy its
testimonials."
"Then it's an unfortunate coincidence that your check should have come
right on top of Mr. Smithson's very ill-advised letter."
By a regular follow-up mechanism devised by himself, every donation by
Dr. Surtaine was made the basis of a shrewd attempt to extract from the
beneficiary an indorsement of Certina's virtues, or, if not that, of the
personal character and professional probity of its proprietor. This is
what had happened in the instance of the check to Mr. Hale's church,
Smithson being the medium through whom the attempt was made.
The quack saw no occasion to explain this to his inquisitor. So he
merely said: "I never saw any such letter," which was, in a literal
sense, true.
"Nor will you know anything about it, I suppose, until the name of the
church is spread broadcast through your newspaper advertising."
Now, it is a rule of the patent medicine trade never to advertise an
unwilling testimonial because that kind always has a kick-back. Hence:--
"Oh, if you feel that way about it," said Dr. Surtaine disdainfully,
"I'll keep it out of print."
"And return it to me," continued the other, in a tone of calm
sequentiality, which might represent either appeal, suggestion, or
demand.
"Don't see the point," said the quack shortly.
"Since you do not intend to use it in your business, it can't be of any
value to you," countered the other.
"What's its value to you?"
"In plain words, the honor of my church is involved. The check is a
bribe. The letter is the graft."
"Nothing of the sort. You come here, a minister of the gospel," Dr.
Surtaine reproached him sorrowfully, "and use hard words about a
transaction that is perfectly straight business and happens every day."
"Not in my church."
"It isn't your letter, anyhow. You didn't write it."
"It is written on the official paper of the church. Smithson told me so.
He didn't understand what use would be made of it when he wrote it. Take
your check back, Dr. Surtaine, and give me the letter."
"Persistency, thy name is a jewel," said Dr. Surtaine with an air of
scholarliness. "You win. The letter will be returned to-morrow. You'll
take my word, I suppose?"
"Certainly; and thank you."
"And now, suppose I offered to leave the check in your hands?" asked the
Doctor curiously.
"I couldn't take it," came the decisive reply.
"Do you mind telling me why?"
The visitor spread out upon the table the newspaper page which he had
taken from his pocket. "This morning's 'Clarion,'" he said.
"So that's the trouble! You've been reading that blackmailing sheet.
Why, what's the 'Clarion,' anyway? A scandal-mongering, yellow
blatherskite, on its last legs financially. It's for sale to any bidder
who'd be fool enough to put up money. The 'Clarion' went after me
because it couldn't get our business. It ain't any straighter than a
corkscrew's shadow."
"Do I understand you to say that this attack is due to your refusal to
advertise in the 'Clarion'?"
"That's it, to a T. And now, you see, Mr. Hale," continued Dr. Surtaine
in a tone of long-suffering and dignified injury, "how believing all you
see in print lures you into chasing after strange dogs."
The visitor's mouth quivered a little at this remarkable paraphrase of
the Scripture passage; but he said gravely enough:
"Then we get back to the original charges, which the 'Clarion' quotes
from the 'Church Standard.'"
"And there you are! Up to three years ago the 'Standard' took all the
advertising we'd give them, and glad to get it. Then it went daffy over
the muckraking magazine exposures, and threw out all the proprietary
copy. Now nothing will do but it must roast its old patrons to show off
its new virtue."
"Do you deny what the editor of the 'Standard' said about Certina?"
Dr. Surtaine employed the stock answer of medical quackery when
challenged on incontrovertible facts. "Why, my friend," he said with
elaborate carelessness, "if I tried to deny everything that
irresponsible parties say about me, I wouldn't have any time left for
business. Well, well; plenty of other people will be glad of that two
thousand. Turn in the check at the cashier's window, please. Good-day
to you."
The Reverend Norman Hale retired, leaving the "Clarion's" denunciation
lying outspread on the table.
Meantime, wandering in the hallway, Hal had encountered Milly Neal.
"Are you very busy, Miss Neal?" he asked.
"Not more than usual," she answered, regarding him with bright and
kindly eyes. "Did you want me?"
"Yes. I want to know some things about this business."
"Outside of my own department, I don't know much."
"Well; inside your own department, then. May I ask some questions?"
With a businesslike air she consulted a tiny watch, then glanced toward
a settee at the end of the hall. "I'll give you ten minutes," she
announced. "Suppose we sit down over there."
"Do the writers of those letters--symp-letters, I believe, you call
them--" he began; "do they seem to get benefit out of the advice
returned?"
"What advice? To take Certina? Why, yes. Most of 'em come back for
more."
"You think it good medicine for all that long list of troubles?"
The girl's eyes opened wide. "Of course it's a good medicine!" she
cried. "Do you think the Chief would make any other kind?"
"No; certainly not," he hastened to disclaim. "But it seems like a wide
range of diseases to be cured by one and the same prescription."
"Oh, we've got other proprietaries, too," she assured him with her
pretty air of partnership. "There's the Stomachine, and the headache
powders and the Relief Pills and the liniment; Dr. Surtaine runs 'em
all, and every one's a winner. Not that I keep much track of 'em. We
only handle the Certina correspondence in our room. I know what that
can do. Why, I take Certina myself when there's anything the matter with
me."
"Do you?" said Hal, much interested. "Well, you're certainly a living
testimonial to its efficacy."
"All the people in the shop take it. It's a good tonic, even when you're
all right."
The listener felt his vague uneasiness soothed. If those who were
actually in the business had faith in the patent medicine's worth, it
must be all that was claimed for it.
"I firmly believe," continued the little loyalist, "that the Chief has
done more good and saved more lives than all the doctors in the country.
I'd trust him further than any regular doctor I know, even if he doesn't
belong to their medical societies and all that. They're jealous of him;
that's what's the matter with them."
"Good for you!" laughed Hal, feeling his doubts melt at the fire of her
enthusiasm. "You're a good rooter for the business."
"So's the whole shop. I guess your father is the most popular employer
in Worthington. Have you decided to come into the business, Mr.
Surtaine?"
"Do you think I'd make a valuable employee, Miss Milly?" he bantered.
But to Milly Neal the subject of the Certina factory admitted of no
jocularity. She took him under advisement with a grave and quaint
dubiety.
"Have you ever worked?"
"Oh, yes; I'm not wholly a loafer."
"For a living, I mean."
"Unfortunately I've never had to."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-five."
"I don't believe I'd want you in my department, if it was up to me," she
pronounced.
"Do you think I wouldn't be amenable to your stern discipline?"
Still she refused to meet him on his ground of badinage. "It isn't
that. But I don't think you'd be interested enough to start in at the
bottom and work up."
"Perhaps you're right, Miss Neal," said Hal, a little startled by the
acuteness of her judgment, and a little piqued as well. "Though you
condemn me to a life of uselessness on scant evidence."
She went scarlet. "Oh, please! You know I didn't mean that. But you seem
too--too easy-going, too--"
"Too ornamental to be useful?"
Suddenly she stamped her foot at him, flaming into a swift exasperation.
"You're laughing at me!" she accused. "I'm going back to my work. I
won't stay and be made fun of." Then, in another and rather a dismayed
tone, "Oh, I'm forgetting about your being the Chief's son."
Hal jumped to his feet. "Please promise to forget it when next we meet,"
he besought her with winning courtesy. "You've been a kind little friend
and adviser. And I thank you for what you have said."
"Not at all," she returned lamely, and walked away, her face still
crimson.
Returning to the executive suite, the young scion found his father
immersed in technicalities of copy with the second advertising writer.
"Sit down, Boyee," said he. "I'll be through in a few minutes." And he
resumed his discussion of "black-face," "36-point," "indents," "boxes,"
and so on.
Left to his own devices Hal turned idly to the long table. From the
newspaper which the Reverend Norman Hale had left, there glared up at
him in savage black type this heading:--
CERTINA A FAKE
_Religious Editor Shows Up Business and Professional_
_Methods of Dr. L. André Surtaine_
The article was made up of excerpts from a religious weekly's exposé,
interspersed with semi-editorial comment. As he skimmed it, Hal's wrath
and loyalty waxed in direct ratio. Malice was obvious in every line, to
the incensed reader. But the cause and purpose were not so clear. As he
looked up, brooding upon it, he caught his father's eye.
"Been reading that slush, Hal?"
"Yes, sir. Of course it's all a pack of lies. But what's the reason for
it?"
"Blackmail, son."
"Do they expect to get money out of you this way?"
"No. That isn't it. I've always refused to have any business dealings
with 'em, and this is their way of revenge."
"But I didn't know you advertised Certina in the local papers."
"We don't. Proprietaries don't usually advertise in their own towns.
We're so well known at home that we don't have to. But some of the side
lines, like the Relief Pills, that go out under another trade name, use
space in the Worthington papers. The 'Clarion' isn't getting that copy,
so they're sore."
"Can't you sue them for libel, Dad?"
"Hardly worth while. Decent people don't read the 'Clarion' anyway, so
it can't hurt much. It's best just to ignore such things."
"Something ought to be done about it," declared Hal angrily.
Stuffing the paper into his pocket he took his wrath out into the open
air. Hard and fast he walked, but the farther he went the hotter burned
his ire.
There was in Harrington Surtaine a streak of the romantic. His inner
world was partly made up of such chimerical notions as are bred in a
lively mind, not in very close touch with the world of actualities, by a
long course of novel-reading and theater-going. Deep within him stirred
a conviction that there was a proper and suitable, nay, an almost
obligatory, method made and provided for just such crises as this:
something that a keen-spirited and high-bred youth ought to do about it.
Suddenly it came to him. Young Surtaine returned home with his resolve
taken. In the morning he would fare forth, a modern knight redressing
human wrongs, and lick the editor of the "Clarion."
Overnight young Mr. Surtaine revised his project. Horsewhipping would be
no more than the offending editor deserved. However, he should have his
chance. Let him repent and retract publicly, and the castigation should
be remitted. Forthwith the avenger sat him down to a task of
composition. The apology which, after sundry corrections and
emendations, he finally produced in fair copy, was not alone complete
and explicit: it was fairly abject. In such terms might a confessed and
hopeless criminal cast himself desperately upon the mercy of the court.
Previsioning this masterly _apologium_ upon the first page of the
morrow's "Clarion,"--or perhaps at the top of the editorial
columns,--its artificer thrilled with the combined pride of authorship
and poetic justice.
On the walls of the commodious room which had been set aside in the
Surtaine mansion for the young master's study hung a plaited dog-whip.
The agent of just reprisals curled this neatly inside his overcoat
pocket and set forth upon his errand. It was then ten o'clock in the
morning.
Now, in hunting the larger fauna of the North American continent with a
dog-whip, it is advantageous to have some knowledge of the game's
habits. Mr. Harrington Surtaine's first error lay in expecting to find
the editorial staff of a morning newspaper on duty in the early
forenoon. So much a sweeper, emerging from a pile of dust, communicated
to him across a railing, further volunteering that three o'clock would
be a well-chosen hour for return, as the boss would be less pressed upon
by engagements then, perhaps, than at other hours.
In the nature of things, the long delay might well have cooled the
knightliest ardor. But as he departed from the office, Mr. Surtaine took
with him a copy of that day's "Clarion" for perusal, and in its pages
discovered a "follow-up" of the previous day's outrage. Back home he
went, and added to his literary effort a few more paragraphs wherein the
editorial "we" more profoundly cringed, cowered, and crawled in
penitential abasement. Despite the relish of the words, Hal rather hoped
that the editor would refuse to publish his masterpiece. He itched to
use that whip.
CHAPTER VI
LAUNCHED
For purposes of vital statistics, the head office boy of the Worthington
"Daily Clarion" was denominated Reginald Currier. As this chaste
cognomen was artistically incompatible with his squint eye, his militant
swagger, and a general bearing of unrepressed hostility toward all
created beings, he was professionally known as "Bim." Journalism, for
him, was comprised in a single tenet; that no visitor of whatsoever kind
had or possibly could have any business of even remotely legitimate
nature within the precincts of the "Clarion" office. Tradition of the
place held that a dent in the wall back of his desk marked the
termination of an argument in which Reginald, all unwitting, had essayed
to maintain his thesis against the lightweight champion of the State who
had come to call on the sporting editor.
There had been a lull in the activities of this minor Cerberus when the
light and swinging footfall of one coming up the dim stairway several
steps at a time aroused his ready suspicions. He bristled forth to the
rail to meet a tall and rather elegant young man whom he greeted with a
growl to this effect:
"Hoojer wanter see?"
"Is the editor in?"
"Whajjer want uvvum?"
The tall visitor stepped forward, holding out a card. "Take this to him,
please, and say that I'd like to see him at once."
Unwisely, Reginald disregarded the card, which fluttered to the floor.
More unwisely, he ignored a certain tensity of expression upon the face
of his interlocutor. Most unwisely he repeated, in his very savagest
growl:
"Whajjer want uvvum, I said. Didn' chu hear me?"
Graceful and effortless as the mounting lark, Reginald Currier rose and
soared. When he again touched earth, it was only to go spinning into a
far corner where he first embraced, then strove with and was finally
tripped and thrown by a large and lurking waste-basket. Somewhat
perturbed, he extricated himself in time to see the decisive visitor
disappear through an inner door. Retrieving the crumpled and rejected
card from its resting-place, he examined it with interest. The legend
upon it was "Mr. Harrington Surtaine."
"Huh!" grunted Reginald Currier; "I never seen _that_ in no sporting
column."
Once within the sacred precincts, young Mr. Surtaine turned into an
inner room, bumped against a man trailing a kite-tail of proof, who had
issued from a door to the right, asked a question, got a response, and
entered the editor's den. Two littered desks made up the principal
furniture of the place. Impartially distributed between the further desk
and a chair, the form of one lost in slumber sprawled. At the nearer one
sat a dyspeptic man of middle age waving a heavy pencil above a galley
proof.
"Are you the editor?" asked Hal.
"One editor. I'm Mr. Sterne. How the devil did you get in here?"
"Are you responsible for this?" Hal held up the morning's clipping,
headed "Surtaine Fakeries Explained."
"Who are you?" asked Sterne, nervously hitching in his chair.
"I am Harrington Surtaine."
The journalist whistled, a soft, long-drawn note. "Dr. Surtaine's son?"
he inquired.
"Yes."
"That's awkward." "Not half as awkward as it's going to be unless you
apologize privately and publicly."
Mr. Sterne looked at him estimatingly, at the same time wadding up a
newspaper clipping from the desk in front of him. This he cast at the
slumberer with felicitous accuracy.
"Hoong!" observed that gentleman, starting up and caressing his cheek.
"Wake up, Mac. Here's a man from the Trouble Belt, with samples to
show."
The individual thus addressed slowly rose out of his chair, exhibiting a
squat, gnarly figure surmounted by a very large head.
Hal's hand came up out of his pocket, with the dog-whip writhing
unpleasantly after it. Simultaneously, the ex-sleeper projected himself,
without any particular violence but with astonishing quickness, between
the caller and his prey. Without at all knowing whence it was derived,
Hal became aware of a large, black, knobby stick, which it were
inadequate to call a cane, in his new opponent's grasp.
Of physical courage there was no lack in the scion of the Surtaine line.
Neither, however, was he wholly destitute of reasoning powers and
caution. The figure before him was of an unquestionable athleticism; the
weapon of obvious weight and fiber. The situation was embarrassing.
"Please don't lick the editor," said the interrupter of poetic justice
good-humoredly. "Appropriately framed and hung upon the wall, fifteen
cents apiece. Yah-ah-ah-oo!" he yawned prodigiously. "Calm down," he
added.
Hal stared at the squat and agile figure. "You're the office bully and
bouncer, I suppose," he said.
"McGuire Ellis, _at_ your service. Bounce only when compelled. Otherwise
peaceful. _And_ sleepy."
"My business is with this man," said Hal, indicating Sterne. "Put up
your toy, then, and state it in words of one syllable."
For a moment the visitor pondered, drawing the whip through his hands,
uncertainly. "I'm not fool enough to go up against that war-club," he
remarked.
Mr. McGuire Ellis nodded approval. "First sensible thing I've heard you
say," he remarked.
"But neither"--here Hal's jaw projected a little--"am I going to let
this thing drop."
"Law?" inquired Sterne. "If you think there's any libel in what the
'Clarion' has said, ask your lawyer. What do you want, anyway?"
Thus recalled to the more pacific phase of his errand, Hal produced his
document. "If you've got an iota of decency or fairness about you,
you'll print that," he said.
Sterne glanced through it swiftly. "Nothing doing," he stated
succinctly. "Did Dr. Surtaine send you here with that thing?"
"My father doesn't know that I'm here."
"Oho! So that's it. Knight-errantry, eh? Now, let me put this thing to
you straight, Mr. Harrington Surtaine. If your father wants to make a
fair and decent statement, without abuse or calling names, over his own
signature, the 'Clarion' will run it, at fifty cents a word."
"You dirty blackmailer!" said Hal slowly.
"Hard names go with this business, my young friend," said the other
coolly.
"At present you've got me checked. But you don't always keep your paid
bully with you, I suppose. One of these days you and I will meet--"
"And you'll land in jail."
"He talks awfully young, doesn't he?" said Mr. Ellis, shaking a solemn
head.
"As for blackmail," continued Sterne, a bit eagerly, "there's nothing in
that. We've never asked Dr. Surtaine for a dollar. He hasn't got a thing
on us." "You never asked him for advertising either, I suppose," said
Hal bitterly.
"Only in the way of business. Just as we go out after any other
advertising."
"If he had given you his ads.--"
"Oh, I don't say that we'd have gone after him if he'd been one of our
regular advertisers. Every other paper in town gets his copy; why
shouldn't we? We have to look out for ourselves. We look out for our
patrons, too. Naturally, we aren't going to knock one of our
advertisers. Others have got to take their chances."
"And that's modern journalism!"
"It's the newspaper business," cried Sterne. "No different from any
other business."
"No wonder decent people consider newspaper men the scum of the earth,"
said Hal, with rather ineffectual generalization.
"Don't be young!" besought McGuire Ellis wearily. "Pretend you're a
grown-up man, anyway. You look as if you might have some sense about you
somewhere, if you'd only give it a chance to filter through."
Some not unpleasant quirk of speech and manner in the man worked upon
Hal's humor.
"Why, I believe you're right about the youngness," he admitted, with a
smile. "Perhaps there are other ways of getting at this thing. Just for
a test,--for the last time will you or will you not, Mr. Sterne, publish
this apology?"
"We will not. There's just one person can give me orders."
"Who is that?"
"The owner."
"I think you'll be sorry."
McGuire Ellis turned upon him a look that was a silent reproach to
immaturity.
"Anything more?" queried Sterne. "Nothing," said Hal, with an effort at
courtesy. "Good-day to you both."
"Well, what about it?" asked McGuire Ellis of his chief, as the
visitor's footsteps died away.
"Nothing about it. When'll the next Surtaine roast be ready?"
"Ought to be finished to-morrow."
"Schedule it for Thursday. We'll make the old boy squeal yet. Do you
believe the boy when he says that his father didn't send him?"
"Sounded straight. Pretty straight boy he looked like to me, anyway."
"Pretty fresh kid, _I_ think. And a good deal of a pin-head.
Distributing agency for the old man's money, I guess. He won't get
anywhere."
"Well, I'm not so sure," said Ellis contemplatively. "Of course he acts
gosh-awful young. But did you notice him when he went?"
"Not particularly."
"He was smiling."
"Well?"
"Always look out for a guy that smiles when he's licked. He's got a
come-back to him."
Eleven o'clock that night saw McGuire Ellis lift his head from the
five-minute nap which he allowed himself on evenings of light pressure
after the Washington copy was run off, and blink rapidly. At the same
moment Mr. David Sterne gave utterance to an exclamation, partly of
annoyance, partly of surprise. Mr. Harrington Surtaine, wearing an
expression both businesslike and urbane stood in the doorway.
"Good-evening, gentlemen," he remarked.
Mr. Sterne snorted. Mr. Ellis's lips seemed about to form the
reproachful monosyllable "young." Without further greeting the visitor
took off his hat and overcoat and hung them on a peg. "You make
yourself at home," growled Sterne.
"I do," agreed Hal, and, discarding his coat, hung that on another peg.
"I've got a right to."
Tilting a slumber-burdened head, McGuire Ellis released his adjuration
against youthfulness.
"What's the answer?" demanded Sterne.
"I've just bought out the 'Clarion,'" said Hal.
CHAPTER VII
THE OWNER
Some degree of triumph would perhaps have been excusable in the new
owner. Most signally had he turned the tables on his enemies. Yet it was
with no undue swagger that he seated himself upon a chair of
problematical stability, and began to study the pages of the morning's
issue. Sterne regarded him dubiously.
"This isn't a bluff, I suppose?" he asked.
"Ask your lawyers."
"Mac, get Rockwell's house on the 'phone, will you, and find out if
we've been sold."
Presently the drawl of Mr. Ellis was heard, pleading with a fair and
anonymous Central, whom he addressed with that charming impersonality
employed toward babies, pet dogs, and telephone girls, as "Tootsie," to
abjure juvenility, and give him 322 Vincent, in a hurry.
"You'll excuse me, Mr. Surtaine," said Sterne, in a new and ingratiating
tone, for which Hal liked him none the better, "but verifying news has
come to be an instinct with me."
"It's straight," said Ellis, turning his heavy face to his principal,
after a moment's talk over the wire. "Bought _and_ sold, lock, stock,
and barrel."
"Have you had any newspaper experience, Mr. Surtaine?" inquired Sterne.
"Not on the practical side."
"As owner I suppose you'll want to make changes."
"Undoubtedly."
"They all do," sighed Sterne. "But my contract has several months--"
"Yes: I've been over the contracts with a lawyer. Yours and Mr.
Ellis's. He says they won't hold."
"All newspaper contracts are on the cheese," observed McGuire Ellis
philosophically. "Swiss cheese, at that. Full of holes."
"I don't admit it," protested Sterne. "Even so, to turn a man out--"
A snort of disgust from Ellis interrupted the plea. The glare with which
that employee favored his boss fairly convicted the seamed and graying
editor of willful and captious immaturity.
"Contract or no contract, you'll both be fairly treated," said the new
owner shortly.
"Who, me?" inquired Ellis. "You can go rapidly to hell and take my
contract with you. I know when I'm fired."
"Who fired you?"
"I did. To save you the satisfaction."
"Very good of you, I'm sure," drawled Hal in a tone of lofty
superiority, turning away. Out of the corner of his eye, however, he
could see McGuire Ellis making pantomime as of one spanking a baby with
fervor. Amusement helped him to the recovery of his temper.
"Working under an amateur journalist will just suit Sterne," observed
Ellis, in a tone quite as offensive as Hal's.
"Cut it out, Mac," suggested his principal. "There's no occasion for
hard words."
"Amateur isn't the hardest word in the dictionary," said Hal quietly.
"Perhaps I'll become a professional in time."
"Buying a newspaper doesn't make a newspaper man."
"Well, I'm not too old to learn. But see here, Mr. Ellis, doesn't your
contract hold you?"
"The contract that you said was no good? Do you expect it to work all
one way?"
"Well, professional honor, then, I should suppose--"
"Professional honor!" cut in Ellis, with scathing contempt. "You step
in here and buy a paper out of a freak of revenge--"
"Hold on, there! How can you know my motive?"
"What else could it be?"
Hal was silent, finding no answer.
"You see! To feed your mean little spite, you've taken over control of
the biggest responsibility, for any one with any decent sense of
responsibility, that a man could take on his shoulders. And what will
you make of it? A toy! A rich kid's plaything."
"Well, what would you make of it, yourself?" asked Hal.
"A teacher and a preacher. A force to tear down and to build up. To rip
this old town wide open, and remould it nearer to the heart's desire!
That's what a newspaper might be, and ought to be, and could be, by God
in Heaven, if the right man ever had a free hand at it."
"Don't get profane, my boy," tittered Sterne.
"You think that's swearing?" retorted Ellis. "Yes; _you_ would. But I
was nearer praying then than I've ever been since I came to this office.
We'll never live to see that prayer answered, you and I."
"Perhaps," began Hal.
"Oh, perhaps!" Ellis snatched the word from his lips. "Perhaps you're
the boy to do it, eh? Why, it's your kind that's made journalism the
sewer of the professions, full of the scum and drainings of every other
trade's failures. What chance have we got to develop ideals when you
outsiders control the whole business?"
"Hullo!" observed Sterne with a grin. "Where do you come in on the
idealist business, Mac? This is new talk from you."
"New? Why wouldn't it be new? Would I waste it on you, Dave Sterne?"
"You certainly never have since I've known you."
"Call it easing up my mind if you like. I can afford that luxury, now
that you 're not my boss any longer. Not but what it's all Greek to
you."
"Had a drink to-day, Mac?"
"No, damn you. But I'm going out of here and take a hundred. First,
though, I'm going to tell young Bib-and-Tucker over there a thing or two
about his new toy. Oh, yes: you can listen, too, Sterne, but it won't
get to your shelled-in soul."
"You in'trust muh, strangely," said Sterne, and looked over to Hal for
countenance of his uneasy amusement.
But the new owner did not appear amused. He had faced around in his
chair and now sat regarding the glooming and exalted Ellis with an
intent surprise.
"A plaything! That's what you think you've bought, young Mr. Harrington
Surtaine. One of two things you'll do with it: either you'll try to run
it yourself, and you'll dip deeper and deeper into Poppa's medicine-bag
till he gets sick of it and closes you up; or you'll hire some practical
man to manage it, and insist on dividends that'll keep it just where it
is now. And that's pretty low, even for a Worthington paper."
"It won't live on blackmail, at any rate," said Hal, his mind reverting
to its original grievance.
"Maybe it will. You won't know it if it does. Anyhow, it'll live on
suppression and distortion and manipulation of news, because it'll have
to, if it's going to live at all."
"You mean that is the basis of the newspaper business as it is to-day?"
"Generally speaking. It certainly is in Worthington."
"You're frank, at any rate. Where's all your glowing idealism now?"
"Vanished into mist. All idealism goes that way, doesn't it?"
"Not if you back it up with work. You see, Mr. Ellis, I'm something of
an idealist myself."
"The Certina brand of idealism. Guaranteed under the Pure Thought and
Deed Act."
"Our money may have been made a little--well, blatantly," said Hal,
flushing. "But at least it's made honestly." He was too intent on his
subject to note either Sterne's half-wink or Ellis's stare of blank
amazement. "And I'm going to run this newspaper on the same high
principles. I don't quite reconcile your standards with the practices of
this paper, Mr. Ellis--"
"Mac has nothing to do with the policy of the paper, Mr. Surtaine," put
in Sterne. "He's only an employee."
"Then why don't you get work on some paper that practices your
principles?"
"Hard to find. Not having been born with a silver spoon, full of
Certina, in my mouth, I have to earn my own living. It isn't profitable
to make a religion of one's profession, Mr. Surtaine. Not that I think
you need the warning. But I've tried it, and I know."
"Do you know, it's rather a pity you don't like me," said Hal, with
ruminative frankness. "I think I could use some of that religion of
yours."
"Not on the market," returned Ellis shortly.
"You see," pursued the other, "it's really my own money I've put into
this paper: half of all I've got."
"How much did you pay for it?" inquired Ellis: "since we're telling each
other our real names."
"Two hundred and thirty thousand dollars."
"Whee-ee-ee-ew!" Both his auditors joined in the whistle.
"They asked two-fifty."
"Half of that would have bought," said Sterne.
Hal digested that information in silence for a minute. "I suppose I was
easy. Hurry never yet made a good bargain. But, now that I've got this
paper I'm going to run it myself."
"On the rocks," prophesied McGuire Ellis. "Utter and complete shipwreck.
I'm glad I'm off."
"Is it your habit, Mr. Ellis, to run at the first suggestion of
disaster?"
Ellis looked his questioner up and down. "Say the rest of it," he
barked.
"Why, it seems to me you're still an officer of this ship. Doesn't it
enter into your ethics somewhere that you ought to stick by her until
the new captain can fill your place, and not quit in the face of the
shipwreck you foresee?"
"Humph," grunted McGuire Ellis, "I guess you're not quite as young as I
thought you were. How long would you want me to stay?"
"About a year."
"What!"
"On an unbreakable contract. To be editorial manager. You see, I'm
prepared to buy ideals."
"What about my opinion of amateur journalism?"
"You'll just have to do the best you can about that."
"Give me till to-morrow to think it over."
"All right."
Ellis put down the hat and cane which he had picked up preparatory to
his departure.
"Not going out after those hundred drinks, eh, Mac?" laughed Sterne.
"Indefinitely postponed," replied the other.
"The first thing to do," said Hal decisively, "is to make amends. Mr.
Sterne, the 'Clarion' is to print a full retraction of the attacks upon
my father, at once."
"Yes, sir," assented Sterne, slavishly responsive to the new authority.
Not so McGuire Ellis. "If you do that you'll make a fool of your own
paper," he said bluntly.
"Make a fool of the paper by righting a rank injustice?"
"Just the point. It isn't a rank injustice."
"See here, Mr. Sterne: isn't it a fact that this attack was made because
my father doesn't advertise with you?"
The editor twisted uneasily in his chair. "A newspaper's got to look
out for its own interests," he asserted defensively.
"Please answer my question."
"Well--yes; I suppose it is so."
"Then you're simply operating a blackmailing scheme to get the Certina
advertising for the 'Clarion.'"
"The Certina advertising?" repeated Sterne in obvious surprise.
"Certina doesn't advertise locally. Most patent medicines don't. It's a
sort of fashion of the trade not to," explained Ellis.
"What on earth is all this about, then?"
The two newspaper men exchanged a glance. Obviously the new boss
understood little of his progenitor's extensive business interests.
"Might as well know sooner as later," decided Ellis, aloud. "It's the
Neverfail Company of Cincinnati that we got turned down on."
"What is the Neverfail Company?"
"One of Dr. Surtaine's alia--one of the names he does business under.
Every other paper in town gets their copy. We don't. Hence the roast."
"What sort of business is it?"
"Relief Pills. Here's the ad. in this morning's 'Banner.'"
The name struck chill on Hal's memory. He stared at the sinister oblong
of type, vaguely sensing in its covert promises the taint, yet failing
to apprehend the full villainy of the lure.
"Whatever the advertising is," said he, "the principle is the same."
"Precisely," chirped Ellis.
"And you call that decent journalism?"
"No: my extremely youthful friend, I do not. What's more, I never did."
"If you want a retraction published," said Sterne, spreading wide his
hands as one offering fealty, "wouldn't it be just as well to preface
it with an announcement of the taking-over of the paper by yourself?"
"That itself would be tantamount to an announced reversal of policy,"
mused Hal.
Again Sterne and Ellis glanced at each other, but with a different
expression this time. The look meant that they had recognized in the
intruder a flash of that mysterious sense vaguely known as "the
newspaper instinct," with which a few are born, but which most men
acquire by giving mortgages on the blest illusions of youth.
"Cor-_rect_," said Ellis.
"Let the retraction rest for the present. I'll decide it later."
The door was pushed open, and a dark man of perhaps thirty, with a
begrimed and handsome face, entered. In one hand he held a proof.
"About this paragraph," he said to Sterne in a slightly foreign accent.
"Is it to run to-morrow?"
"What paragraph is that?"
"The one-stick editorial guying Dr. Surtaine."
"Kill it," said Sterne hastily. "This is Mr. Harrington Surtaine. Mr.
Surtaine, this is Max Veltman, foreman of our composing-room."
Slowly the printer turned his fine, serious face from one to the other.
"Ah," he said presently. "So it is arranged. We do not print this
paragraph. Good!"
Impossible to take offense at the tone. Yet the smile which accompanied
it was so plainly a sneer that Hal's color rose.
"Mr. Surtaine is the new owner of the 'Clarion,'" explained Ellis.
"In that case, of course," said Veltman quietly. "Good-night,
gentlemen."
"Good-looking chap," remarked Hal. "But what a curious expression."
"Veltman's a thinker and a crank," said Ellis. "If he had a little more
balance he'd make his mark. But he's a sort of melancholiac. Ill-health,
nerves, and a fixed belief in the general wrongness of creation."
"Well. I'll get to know more about the shop to-morrow," said Hal. "I'm
for home and sleep just now. See you at--what time, by the way?"
"Noon," said Sterne. "If that suits you."
"Perfectly. Good-night."
Arrived at home, Hal went straight to the big ground-floor library
where, as the light suggested, his father sat reading.
"Dad, do you want a retraction printed?"
"Of the 'Clarion' article?"
"Yes."
"From 'Want' to 'Get' the road runs rocky," said the senior Surtaine
whimsically.
"I've just come from removing a few of the rocks at the 'Clarion'
office."
"Go down to lick the editor?" Dr. Surtaine's eyes twinkled.
"There may have been some such notion in the back of my head."
"Expensive exercise. Did you do it?"
"No. He had a club."
"If I were running a slander-machine like the 'Clarion' I'd want
six-inch armor-plate and a quick-fire battery. Well, what did you do?"
"Bought the paper."
"You needn't have gone down town to do that. It comes to the office."
"You don't understand. I've bought the 'Clarion,' presses, plant,
circulation, franchise, good-will, ill-will, high, low, jack, and
the game."
"You! What for?"
"Why," said Hal thoughtfully; "mainly because I lost my temper, I
believe."
"Sounds like a pretty heavy loss, Boy-ee."
"Two hundred and thirty thousand dollars. Oh, the prodigal son hasn't
got anything on me, Dad, when it comes to scattering patrimonies," he
concluded a little ruefully.
"What are you going to do with it, now you've got it?"
"Run it. I've bought a career."
"Now you're talking." The big man jumped up and set both hands on Hal's
shoulders. "That's the kind of thing I like to hear, and in the kind of
way it ought to be said. You go to it, Hal. I'll back you, as far as you
like."
"No, sir. I thank you just the same: this is my game."
"Want to play it alone, do you?"
"How else can I make a career of it?"
"Right you are, Boyee. But it takes something behind money to build up a
newspaper. And the 'Clarion' 'll take some building up."
"Well, I've got aspiration enough, if it comes to that," smiled Hal.
"Aspiration's a good starter: but it's perspiration that makes a
business go. Are you ready to take off your coat and work?"
"I certainly am. There's a lot for me to learn."
"There is. Everything. Want some advice from the Old Man?"
"I most surely do, Dad."
"Listen here, then. A newspaper is a business proposition. Never forget
that. All these hifalutin' notions about its being a palladium and the
voice of the people and the guardian of public interests are good enough
to talk about on the editorial page. Gives a paper a following, that
kind of guff does. But the duty of a newspaper is the duty of any other
business, to make money. There's the principle, the policy, the
politics, ethics, and religion of the newspaper in a nutshell. Now, how
are you going to make money with the 'Clarion'?"
"By making it a better paper than the others."
"Hm! Better. Yes: that's all right, so long as you mean the right thing
by 'better.' Better for the people that want to use it and can pay for
using it."
"The readers, you mean?"
"The advertisers. It's the advertisers that pay for the paper, not the
readers. You've got to have circulation, of course, to get the
advertising. But remember this, always: circulation is only a means to
an end. It never yet paid the cost of getting out a daily, and it never
will."
"I know enough of the business to understand that."
"Good! Look at the 'Clarion,' as it is. It's got a good circulation. And
that lets it out. It can't get the advertising. So it's losing money,
hand over fist."
"Why can't it?"
"It's yellow. It doesn't treat the business interests right."
"Sterne says they always look after their own advertisers."
"Oh, that! Naturally they have to. Any newspaper will do that. But they
print a lot of stuff about strikes and they're always playing up to the
laboring man and running articles about abuses and pretending to be the
friend of the poor and all that slush, and the better class of business
won't stand for it. Once a paper gets yellow, it has to keep on.
Otherwise it loses what circulation it's got. No advertiser wants to use
it then. The department stores do go into the 'Clarion' because it gets
to a public they can't reach any other way. But they give it just as
little space as they can. It isn't popular."
"Well, I don't intend to make the paper yellow."
"Of course you don't. Keep your mind on it as a business proposition and
you won't go wrong. Remember, it's the advertiser that pays. Think of
that when you write an editorial. Frame it and hang it where every
sub-editor and reporter can't help but see it. Ask of every bit of news,
'Is this going to get me an advertiser? Is that going to lose me an
advertiser?' Be on the lookout to do your advertisers favors. They
appreciate little things like special notices and seeing their names in
print, in personals, and that kind of thing. And keep the paper
optimistic. Don't knock. Boost. Business men warm up to that. Why,
Boy-ee, if you'll just stick to the policy I've outlined, you'll not
only make a big success, but you'll have a model paper that'll make a
new era in local journalism; a paper that every business man in town
will swear by and that'll be the pride of Worthington before you're
through."
Fired by the enthusiasm of his fair vision of a higher journalism, Dr.
Surtaine had been walking up and down, enlivening, with swinging arms,
the chief points of his Pæan of Policy. Now he dropped into his chair
and with a change of voice said:
"Never mind about that retraction, Hal."
"No?"
"No. Forget it. When do you start in work?"
"To-morrow."
"You must save to-morrow evening."
"For what?"
"You're invited to the Festus Willards'. Mrs. Willard was particularly
anxious you should come."
"But I don't know them, Dad."
"Doesn't matter. It's about the most exclusive house in town. A cut
above me, I can tell you. I've never so much as set foot in it."
"Then I won't go," declared his son, flushing.
"Yes: you must," insisted his father anxiously. "Don't mind about me.
I'm not ambitious socially. I told you some folks don't like the
business. It's too noisy. But you won't throw out any echoes. You'll go,
Boyee?"
"Since you want me to, of course, sir. But I shan't find much time for
play if I'm to learn my new trade."
"Oh, you can hire good teachers," laughed his father. "Well, I'm
sleepy. Good-night, Mr. Editor."
"Good-night, Dad. I could use some sleep myself." But thought shared the
pillow with Hal Surtaine's head. Try as he would to banish the
contestants, Dr. Surtaine's Pæan of Policy and McGuire Ellis's
impassioned declaration of faith did battle for the upper hand in his
formulating professional standards. The Doctor's theory was the
clean-cut, comprehensible, and plausible one. But something within Hal
responded to the hot idealism of the fighting journalist. He wanted
Ellis for a fellow workman. And his last waking notion was that he
wanted and needed Ellis mainly because Ellis had told him to go to hell.
CHAPTER VIII
A PARTNERSHIP
All the adjectives in the social register were exhausted by the daily
papers in describing Mrs. Festus Willard's dance. Without following them
into that verbal borderland wherein "recherché" vies with "exclusive,"
and "chic" disputes precedence with "distingué," it is sufficient for
the purposes of this narrative to chronicle the fact that the pick of
Worthington society was there, and not much else. Also, if I may borrow
from the Society Editor's convenient phrase-book, "Among those present"
was Mr. Harrington Surtaine.
For reasons connected with his new venture, Hal had come late. He was
standing near the doorway wondering by what path to attain to an
unidentified hostess, when Miss Esmé Elliot, at the moment engaged with
that very hostess on some matter of feminine strategy with which we have
no concern, spied him.
"Who is the young Greek godling, hopelessly lost in the impenetrable
depths of your drawing-room?" she propounded suddenly.
"Who? What? Where?" queried Mrs. Willard, thus abruptly recalled to her
duties.
"Yonder by the doorway, looking as if he didn't know a soul."
"It's some stranger," said the hostess, trying to peer around an
intervening palm. "I must go and speak to him."
"Wait. Festus has got him."
For the host, a powerful, high-colored man in his early forties, with a
slight limp, had noticed the newcomer and was now introducing himself.
Miss Elliot watched the process with interest.
"Jinny," she announced presently, "I want that to play with."
The stranger turned a little, so that his full face was shown. "It's Hal
Surtaine!" exclaimed Mrs. Willard.
"I don't care who it is. It looks nice. Please, mayn't I have it to play
with?"
"Will you promise not to break it? It used to be a particular pet of
mine."
"When?"
"Oh, years ago. When you were in your cradle."
"Where?"
"On the St. Lawrence. Several summers. He was my boy-knight, and
chaperon, and protector. Such a dear, chivalrous boy!"
"Was he in love with you?" demanded Miss Elliot with lively interest.
"Of course he wasn't. He was a boy of fifteen, and I a mature young
woman of twenty-one."
"He _was_ in love with you," accused the girl, noting a brightness in
her friend's color.
"There was a sort of knightly devotion," admitted the other demurely.
"There always is, isn't there, in a boy of that age, for a woman years
older?"
"And you didn't know him at first?"
"It's ten years since I've set eyes on him. He doesn't even know that I
am the Mrs. Festus Willard who is giving this party."
"Festus is looking around for you. They'll be over here in a minute. No!
Don't get up yet. I want you to do something for me."
"What is it, Norrie?"
"I'm not going to feel well, about supper-time."
"Why not?"
"Would _you_ feel well if you'd been in to dinner three times in the
last week with Will Douglas, and then had to go in to supper with him,
too?"
"But I thought you and Will--"
"I'm tired of having people think," said Miss Elliot plaintively. "Too
much Douglas! Yes; I shall be quite indisposed, about one dance before
supper."
"I'll send you home."
"No, you won't, Jinny, dear. Because I shall suddenly recover, about two
minutes before the oysters arrive."
"Norrie!"
"Truly I shall. Quite miraculously. And you're to see that the young
Greek godling doesn't get any other partner for supper--"
"Esmé!!"
"--because I'm sure he'd rather have me," she concluded superbly.
"Eleanor Stanley Maxwell Elliot!"
"Oh, you may call me _all_ my names. I'm accustomed to abuse from you.
But you'll arrange it, _dear_ Jinny, won't you!"
"Did you ever fail of anything when you put on that wheedling face and
tone?"
"Never," said Miss Elliot with composure, but giving her friend a little
hug. "Here they come. I fly. Bring him to me later."
Piloted by Festus Willard, Hal crossed the floor, and beheld, moving to
meet him with outstretched hands, a little woman with an elfin face and
the smile of a happy child.
"Have you forgotten me, Hal?"
"Lady Jeannette!" he cried, the old boyhood name springing to his lips.
"What are you doing here?"
"Didn't Festus tell you?" She looked fondly up at her big husband. "I
didn't know that the surprise would last up to the final moment."
"It's the very best surprise that has happened to me in Worthington,"
declared Hal emphatically.
"We're quite prepared to adopt you, Surtaine," said Willard pleasantly.
"Jinny has never ceased to wonder why she heard nothing from you in
reply to her note telling of our engagement."
"Never got it," said Hal promptly. "And I've wondered why she dropped me
so unaccountably. It's rather luck for me, you know," he added, smiling,
"to find friends ready-made in a strange town."
"Oh, you'll make friends enough," declared Mrs. Willard. "The present
matter is to make acquaintances. Come and dance this dance out with me
and then I'll take you about and introduce you. Are you as good a dancer
as you used to be?"
Hal was, and something more. And in his hostess he had one of the best
partners in Worthington. Cleverly she had judged that the "Boston" with
her, if he were proficient, would be the strongest recommendation to the
buds of the place. And, indeed, before they had gone twice about the
floor, many curious and interested eyes were turned upon them. Not the
least interested were those of Miss Elliot, who privately decided, over
a full and overflowing programme, that she would advance her recovery to
one dance before the supper announcement.
"You're going to be a social success, Hal," whispered his partner. "I
feel it. And _where_ did you learn that delightful swing after the dip?"
"Picked it up on shipboard. But I shan't have much time for gayeties.
You see, I've become a workingman."
"Tell me about it to-morrow. You're to dine with us; quite _en famille_.
You _must_ like Festus, Hal."
"I should think that would be easy."
"It is. He is just the finest, cleanest, straightest human being in the
world," she said soberly. "Now, come away and meet a million people."
So late was it that most of the girls had no vacancies on their
programmes. But Jeannette Willard was both a diplomat and a bit of a
despot, socially, and several of the young eligibles relinquished, with
surprisingly good grace, so Hal felt, their partners, in favor of the
newcomer. He did not then know the tradition of Worthington's best set,
that hospitality to a stranger well vouched for should be the common
concern of all. Very pleasant and warming he found this atmosphere,
after his years abroad, with its happy, well-bred frankness, its open
comradeship, and obvious, "first-name" intimacies. But though every one
he met seemed ready to extend to him, as a friend of the Willards, a
ready welcome, he could not but feel himself an outsider, and at the
conclusion of a dance he drew back into a side passage, to watch for a
time.
Borne on a draught of air from some invisibly opening door behind him
there came to his nostrils the fairy-spice of the arbutus-scent. He
turned quickly, and saw her almost at his shoulder, the girl of the
lustrous face. Behind her was Festus Willard.
"Ah, there you are, Surtaine," he said. "I've been looking for you to
present you to Miss Elliot. Esmé, this is Mr. Harrington Surtaine."
She neither bowed nor moved in acknowledgment of Hal's greeting, but
looked at him with still, questioning eyes. The springtide hue of the
wild flower at her breast was matched in her cheek. Her head was held
high, bringing out the pure and lovely line of chin and throat. To Hal
it seemed that he had never seen anything so beautiful and desirable.
"Is it a bet?" Festus Willard's quiet voice was full of amusement. "Have
you laid a wager as to which will keep silent longest?"
At this, Hal recovered himself, though stumblingly.
"'Fain would I speak,'" he paraphrased, "'but that I fear to--to--to--'"
"Stutter," suggested Willard, with solicitous helpfulness. The girl
broke into a little trill of mirth, too liquid for laughter; being
rather the sound of a brooklet chuckling musically over its private
delectations.
"If I could have a dance with you," suggested Hal, "I'm sure it would
help my aphasia."
"I'm afraid," she began dubiously, "that--No; here's one just before
supper. If you haven't that--"
"No: I haven't," said Hal hastily. "It's awfully good of you--and lucky
for me."
"I'll be with Mrs. Willard," said the girl, nodding him a cheerful
farewell.
Just what or who his partners for the next few dances were, Hal could
not by any effort recall the next day. He was conscious, on the floor,
only of an occasional glimpse of her, a fugitive savor of the wildwood
fragrance, and then she had disappeared.
Later, as he returned from a talk with Festus Willard outside, he became
aware of the challenge of deep-hued, velvety eyes, regarding him with a
somewhat petulant expression, and recognized his acquaintance of the
motor car and the railroad terminal.
"You'd forgotten me," accused Miss Kathleen Pierce, pouting, as he came
to greet her.
Hal's disclaimer had sufficient diplomatic warmth to banish her
displeasure. She introduced to him as Dr. Merritt a striking-looking,
gray-haired young man, who had come up at the same time with an
anticipatory expression. This promptly vanished when she said
offhandedly to him:
"You've had three dances with me already, Hugh. I'm going to give this
one to Mr. Surtaine if he wants it."
"Of course I want it," said Hal.
"Not that you deserve it," she went on. "You should have come around
earlier. I'm not in the habit of giving dances this late in the
evening."
"How could I break through the solid phalanx of supplicating admirers?"
"At least, you might have tried. I want to try that new step I saw you
doing with Mrs. Willard. And I always get what I want."
"Unfortunate young lady!"
"Why unfortunate?"
"To have nothing seem unattainable. Life must pall on you terribly."
"Indeed, it doesn't. I like being a spoiled child, don't you? Don't you
think it's fun having everything you want to buy, and having a leading
citizen for a father?"
"Is your father a leading citizen?" asked Hal, amused.
"Of course. So's yours. Neither of them quite knows which is the most
leading. Dr. Surtaine is the most popular, but I suppose Pop is the most
influential. Between the two of them they pretty much run this little
old burg. Of course," she added with careless insolence, "Pop has got it
all over Dr. Surtaine socially.
"I humbly feel that I am addressing local royalty," said Hal, smiling
sardonically.
"Who? Me? Oh, I'm only the irresponsible child of wealth and power. Dr.
Merritt called me that once--before I got him tamed." Turning to look at
the gray young man who stood not far off, and noting the quiet force and
competence of the face, Hal hazarded a guess to himself that the very
frank young barbarian with whom he was talking was none too modest in
her estimate of her own capacities. "Mrs. Willard is our local queen,"
she continued. "And Esmé Elliot is the princess. Have you met Esmé yet?"
"Yes."
"Then, of course, nobody else has a chance--so long as you're the newest
toy. Still, you might find a spare hour between-times to come and call
on us. Come on; let's dance."
"Pert" was the mildest term to which Hal reduced his characterization of
Miss Pierce, by the time the one-step ended. Nevertheless, he admitted
to himself that he had been amused. His one chief concern now, however,
was the engagement with Miss Elliot.
When finally his number came around, he found her calmly explaining to a
well-favored young fellow with a pained expression that he must have
made a mistake about the number, while Mrs. Willard regarded her with
mingled amusement and disfavor.
"Don't expect me to dance," she said as Hal approached. "I've twisted my
foot."
"I'm sorry," said he blankly.
"Let's find a quiet place where we can sit. And then you may get me some
supper."
His face lighted up. Esmé Elliot remarked to herself that she had seldom
seen a more pleasing specimen of the youth of the species.
"This is rather like a fairy-gift," he began eagerly, as they made their
way to a nook under the stairway, specially adapted to two people of
hermit tastes. "I shouldn't have dared to expect such good fortune."
"You'll find me quite a fairy-godmother if you're good. Besides," she
added with calm audacity, "I wanted you to myself."
"Why?" he asked, amused and intrigued.
"Curiosity. My besetting sin. You're a phenomenon."
"An ambiguous term. It may mean merely a freak."
"A new young man in Worthington," she informed him, "is a phenomenon, a
social phenomenon. Of course he may be a freak, also," she added
judicially.
"Newness is a charm that soon wears off."
"Then you're going to settle down here?"
"Yes. I've joined the laboring classes."
"What kind of labor?"
"Journalism. I've just started in, to-day."
"Really! Which paper?"
"The 'Clarion.'"
Her expressive face changed. "Oh," she said, a little blankly.
"You don't like the 'Clarion'?"
"I almost never see it. So I don't know. And you're going to begin at
the bottom? That's quite brave of you."
"No; I'm going to begin at the top. That's braver. Anyway, it's more
reckless. I've bought the paper."
"Have you! I hadn't heard of it."
"Nobody's heard of it yet. No outsider. You're the first."
"How delightful!" She leaned closer and looked into his face with
shining eyes. "Tell me more. What are you going to do with it?"
"Learn something about it, first."
"It's rather yellow, isn't it?"
"Putting it mildly, yes. That's one of the things I want to change."
"Oh, I wish I owned a newspaper!"
"Do you? Why?"
"For the power of it. To say what you please and make thousands listen."
The pink in her cheeks deepened. "There's nothing in the world like the
thrill of that sense of power. It's the one reason why I'd be almost
willing to be a man."
"Perhaps you wouldn't need to be. Couldn't you exert the power without
actually owning the newspaper?"
"How?"
"By exercising your potent influence upon the obliging proprietor," he
suggested smiling.
There came a dancing light in her eyes. "Do you think I'd make a good
Goddess-Outside-the-Machine, to the 'Daily Clarion'?"
"Charming! For a two-cent stamp--no, for a spray of your arbutus, I'll
sell you an editorial sphere of influence."
"Generous!" she cried. "What would my duties be?"
"To advise the editor and proprietor on all possible points," he
laughed.
"And my privileges?"
"The right of a queen over a slave."
"We move fast," she said. Her fingers went to the cluster of
delicate-hued bells in her bodice. But it was a false gesture. Esmé
Elliot was far too practiced in her chosen game to compromise herself to
comment by allowing a man whom she had just met to display her favor in
his coat.
"Am I to have my price?" His voice was eager now. She looked very lovely
and childlike, with her head drooping, consideringly, above the flowers.
"Give me a little time," she said. "To undertake a partnership on five
minutes' notice--that isn't business, is it?"
"Nor is this--wholly," he said, quite low.
Esmé straightened up. "I'm starved," she said lightly. "Are you not
going to get me any supper?"
After his return she held the talk to more impersonal topics, advising
him, with an adorable assumption of protectiveness, whom he was to meet
and dance with, and what men were best worth his while. At parting, she
gave him her hand.
"I will let you know," she said, "about the--the sphere of influence."
Hal danced several more numbers, with more politeness than enjoyment,
then sought out his hostess to say good-night.
"I'll see you to-morrow, then," she said: "and you shall tell me all
your news."
"You're awfully good to me, Lady Jeannette," said he gratefully.
"Without you I'd be a lost soul in this town."
"Most people are good to you, I fancy, Hal," said she, looking him over
with approval. "As for being a lost soul, you don't look it. In fact
you look like a very well-found soul, indeed."
"It _is_ rather a cheerful world to live in," said Hal with apparent
irrelevance.
"I hope they haven't spoiled you," she said anxiously. "Are you vain,
Hal? No: you don't look it."
"What on earth should I be vain about? I've never done anything in the
world."
"No? Yet you've improved. You've solidified. What have you been doing to
yourself? Not falling in love?"
"Not that, certainly," he replied, smiling. "Nothing much but
traveling."
"How did you like Esmé Elliot?" she asked abruptly.
"Quite attractive," said Hal in a flat tone.
"Quite attractive, indeed!" repeated his friend indignantly. "In all
your travelings, I don't believe you've ever seen any one else half as
lovely and lovable."
"Local pride carries you far, Lady Jeannette," laughed Hal.
"And I _had_ intended to have her here to dine to-morrow; but as you're
so indifferent--"
"Oh, don't leave her out on my account," said Hal magnanimously.
"I believe you're more than half in love with her already."
"Well, you ought to be a good judge unless you've wholly forgotten the
old days," retorted Hal audaciously.
Jeannette Willard laughed up at him. "Don't try to flirt with a
middle-aged lady who is most old-fashionedly in love with her husband,"
she advised. "Keep your bravo speeches for Esmé! She's used to them."
"Rather goes in for that sort of thing, doesn't she?"
"You mean flirtation? Someone's been talking to you about her," said
Mrs. Willard quickly. "What did they say?"
"Nothing in particular. I just gathered the impression."
"Don't jump to any conclusions about Esmé," advised his friend. "Most
men think her a desperate flirt. She does like attention and admiration.
What woman doesn't? And Esmé is very much a woman."
"Evidently!"
"If she seems heartless, it's because she doesn't understand. She enjoys
her own power without comprehending it. Esmé has never been really
interested in any man. If she had ever been hurt, herself, she would be
more careful about hurting others. Yet the very men who have been
hardest hit remain her loyal friends."
"A tribute to her strategy."
"A finer quality than that. It is her own loyalty, I think, that makes
others loyal to her. But the men here aren't up to her standard. She is
complex, and she is ambitious, without knowing it. Fine and clean as our
Worthington boys are, there isn't one of them who could appeal to the
imagination and idealism of a girl like Esmé Elliot. For Esmé, under all
that lightness, is an idealist; the idealist who hasn't found her
ideal."
"And therefore hasn't found herself."
She flashed a glance of inquiry and appraisal at him. "That's rather
subtle of you," she said. "I hope you don't know _too_ much about women,
Hal."
"Not I! Just a shot in the dark."
"I said there wasn't a man here up to her standard. That isn't quite
true. There is one,--you met him to-night,--but he has troubles of his
own, elsewhere," she added, smiling. "I had hoped--but there has always
been a friendship too strong for the other kind of sentiment between him
and Esmé."
"For a guess, that might be Dr. Merritt," said Hal.
"How did you know?" she cried.
"I didn't. Only, he seems, at a glance, different and of a broader gauge
than the others."
"You're a judge of men, at least. As for Esmé, I suppose she'll marry
some man much older than herself. Heaven grant he's the right one! For
when she gives, she will give royally, and if the man does not meet her
on her own plane--well, there will be tragedy enough for two!"
"Deep waters," said Hal. The talk had changed to a graver tone.
"Deep and dangerous. Shipwreck for the wrong adventurer. But El Dorado
for the right. Such a golden El Dorado, Hal! The man I want for Esmé
Elliot must have in him something of woman for understanding, and
something of genius for guidance, and, I'm afraid, something of the
angel for patience, and he must be, with all this, wholly a man."
"A pretty large order, Lady Jeannette. Well, I've had my warning.
Good-night."
"Perhaps it wasn't so much warning as counsel," she returned, a little
wistfully. "How poor Esmé's ears must be burning. There she goes now.
What a picture! Come early to-morrow."
Hal's last impression of the ballroom, as he turned away, was summed up
in one glance from Esmé Elliot's lustrous eyes, as they met his across
her partner's shoulder, smiling him a farewell and a remembrance of
their friendly pact.
"Honey-Jinny," said Mrs. Willard's husband, after the last guest had
gone; "I don't understand about young Surtaine. Where did he get it?"
"Get what, dear? One might suppose he was a corrupt politician."
"One might suppose he might be anything crooked or wrong, knowing his
old, black quack of a father. But he seems to be clean stuff all
through. He looks it. He acts it. He carries himself like it. And he
talks it. I had a little confab with him out in the smoking-room, and I
tell you, Jinny-wife, I believe he's a real youngster."
"Well, he had a mother, you know."
"Did he? What about her?"
"She was an old friend of my mother's. Dr. Surtaine eloped with her out
of her father's country place in Midvale. He was an itinerant peddler of
some cure-all then. She was a gently born and bred girl, but a mere
child, unworldly and very romantic, and she was carried away by the
man's personal beauty and magnetism."
"I can't imagine it in a girl of any sort of family."
"Mother has told me that he had a personal force that was almost
hypnotic. There must have been something else to him, too, for they say
that Hal's mother died, as desperately in love as she had been when she
ran away with him, and that he was almost crushed by her loss and never
wholly got over it. He transferred his devotion to the child, who was
only three years old when the mother died. When Hal was a mere child my
mother saw him once taking in dollars at a country fair booth,--just
think of it, dearest,--and she said he was the picture of his
girl-mother then. Later, when Professor Certain, as he called himself
then, got rich, he gave Hal the best of education. But he never let him
have anything to do with the Ellersleys--that was Mrs. Surtaine's name.
All the family are dead now."
"Well, there must be some good in the old boy," admitted Willard. "But I
don't happen to like him. I do like the boy. Blood does tell, Jinny. But
if he's really as much of an Ellersley as he looks, there's a bitter
enlightenment before him when he comes to see Dr. Surtaine as he really
is."
Meantime Hal, home at a reasonable hour, in the interest of his new
profession, had taken with him the pleasantest impressions of the
Willards' hospitality. He slept soundly and awoke in buoyant spirits for
the dawning enterprise. On the breakfast table he found, in front of his
plate, a bunchy envelope addressed in a small, strong, unfamiliar hand.
Within was no written word; only a spray of the trailing arbutus, still
unwithered of its fairy-pink, still eloquent, in its wayward, woodland
fragrance, of her who had worn it the night before.
CHAPTER IX
GLIMMERINGS
Ignorance within one's self is a mist which, upon closer approach,
proves a mountain. To the new editor of the "Clarion" the things he did
not know about this enterprise of which he had suddenly become the
master loomed to the skies. Together with the rest of the outer world,
he had comfortably and vaguely regarded a newspaper as a sort of
automatic mill which, by virtue of having a certain amount of grain in
the shape of information dumped into it, worked upon this with an
esoteric type-mechanism, and, in due and exact time, delivered a
definite grist of news. Of the refined and articulated processes of
acquisition, selection, and elimination which went to the turning-out of
the final product, he was wholly unwitting. He could as well have
manipulated a linotype machine as have given out a quiet Sunday's
assignment list: as readily have built a multiple press as made up an
edition.
So much he admitted to McGuire Ellis late in the afternoon of the day
after the Willard party. Fascinated, he had watched that expert
journalist go through page after page of copy, with what seemed
superhuman rapidity and address, distribute the finished product
variously upon hooks, boxes, and copy-boys, and, the immediate task
being finished, lapse upon his desk and fall asleep. Meantime, the owner
himself faced the unpleasant prospect of being smothered under the
downfall of proofs, queries, and scribbled sheets which descended upon
his desk from all sides. For a time he struggled manfully: for a time
thereafter he wallowed desperately. Then he sent out a far cry for help.
The cry smote upon the ear of McGuire Ellis, "Hoong!" ejaculated that
somnolent toiler, coming up out of deep waters. "Did you speak?"
"I want to know what I'm to do with all of these things," replied his
boss, indicating the augmenting drifts.
"Throw 'em on the floor, is _my_ advice," said the employee drowsily.
"The more stuff you throw away, the better paper you get out. That's a
proverb of the business."
"In other words, you think the paper would get along better without me
than with me?"
"But you're enjoying yourself, aren't you?" queried his employee.
Heaving himself out of his chair, he ambled over to Hal's desk and
evolved out of the chaos some semblance of order. "Don't find it as easy
as your enthusiasm painted it," he suggested.
"Oh, I've still got the enthusiasm. If only I knew where to begin."
Ellis rubbed his ear thoughtfully and remarked: "Once I knew a man from
Phoenix, Arizona, who was so excited the first time he saw the ocean
that he borrowed a uniform from an absent friend, shinned aboard a
five-thousand-ton brigantine, and ordered all hands to put out to sea
immediately in the teeth of a whooping gale. But he," added the narrator
in the judicial tone of one who cites mitigating circumstances, "was
drunk at the time."
"Thanks for the parallel. I don't like it. But never mind that. The
question is, What am I going to do?"
"That's the question all right. Are you putting it to me?"
"I am."
"Well, I was just going to put it to you."
"No use. I don't know."
The two men looked each other in the eye, long and steadily. Ellis's
harsh face relaxed to a sort of grin.
"You want me to tell you?"
"Yes."
"What do you think you're hiring, a Professor of Journalism in the
infant class?" The tone of the question offset any apparent ill-nature
in the wording.
"It might be made worth your while."
"All right; I'm hired."
"That's good," said Hal heartily. "I think you'll find I'm not hard to
get along with."
"I think _you'll_ find _I_ am," replied the other with some grimness.
"But I know the game. Well, let's get down to cases. What do you want to
do with the 'Clarion'?"
"Make it the cleanest, decentest newspaper in the city."
"Then you don't think it's that, now."
"No. I know it isn't."
"Did you get that from Dr. Surtaine?"
"Partly."
"What's the other part?"
"First-hand impressions. I've been going through the files."
"When?"
"Since nine o'clock this morning."
"With what idea?"
"Why, having bought a piece of property, I naturally want to know about
it."
"Been through the plant yet? That's your property, too."
"No. I thought I'd find out more from the files. I've bought a
newspaper, not a building."
The characteristic grunt with which Ellis favored his employer in reply
to this seemed to have a note of approval in it.
"Well; now that you own the 'Clarion,'" he said after a pause, "what do
you think of it?"
"It's yellow, and it's sensational, and--it's vulgar."
There was nothing complimentary in the other's snort this time.
"Of course it's vulgar. You can't sell a sweet-scented, prim old-maidy
newspaper to enough people to pay for the z's in one font of type.
People are vulgar. Don't forget that. And you've got to make a
newspaper to suit them. Lesson Number One."
"It needn't be a muckraking paper, need it, forever smelling out
something rotten, and exploiting it in big headlines?"
"Oh, that's all bluff," replied the journalist easily. "We never turn
loose on anything but the surface of things. Why, if any one started in
really to muckrake this old respectable burg, the smell would drive most
of our best citizens to the woods."
"Frankly, Mr. Ellis, I don't like cheap cynicism."
"Prefer to be fed up on pleasant lies?" queried his employee, unmoved.
"Not that either. I can take an unpleasant truth as well as the next
man. But it's got to be the truth."
"Do you know the nickname of this paper?"
"Yes. My father told me of it."
"It was his set that pinned it on us. 'The Daily Carrion,' they call us,
and they said that our triumphal roosters ought to be vultures. Do you
know why?"
"In plain English because of the paper's lies and blackguardism."
"In plainer English, because of its truth. Wait a minute, now. I'm not
saying that the 'Clarion' doesn't lie. All papers do, I guess. They have
to. But it's when we've cut loose on straight facts that we've got in
wrong."
"Give me an instance."
"Well, the sewing-girls' strike."
"Engineered by a crooked labor leader and a notoriety-seeking woman."
"I see the bunch have got to you already, and have filled you up with
their dope. Never mind that, now. We're supposed to be a sort of tribune
of the common people. Rights of the ordinary citizen, and that sort of
thing. So we took up the strike and printed the news pretty straight. No
other paper touched it."
"Why not?"
"Didn't dare. We had to drop it, ourselves. Not until we'd lost ten
thousand dollars in advertising, though, and gained an extra blot on our
reputation as being socialistic and an enemy to capital and all that
kind of rot."
"Wasn't it simply a case of currying favor with the working-classes?"
"According as you look at it." Apparently weary of looking at it at all,
McGuire Ellis tipped back in his chair and contemplated the ceiling.
When he spoke his voice floated up as softly as a ring of smoke. "How
honest are you going to be, Mr. Surtaine?"
"What!"
"I asked you how honest you are going to be."
"It's a question I don't think you need to ask me."
"I do. How else will I find out?"
"I intend the 'Clarion' to be strictly and absolutely honest. That's all
there is to that."
"Don't be so young," said McGuire Ellis wearily. "'Strictly and
absol'--see here, did you ever read 'The Wrecker'?"
"More than once."
"Remember the chap who says, 'You seem to think honesty as simple as
blindman's-buff. I don't. It's some difference of definition, I
suppose'? Now, there's meat in that."
"Difference of definition be hanged. Honesty is honesty."
"And policy is policy. And bankruptcy is bankruptcy."
"I don't see the connection."
"It's there. Honesty for a newspaper isn't just a matter of good
intentions. It's a matter of eternal watchfulness and care and expert
figuring-out of things."
"You mean that we're likely to make mistakes about facts--"
"We're certain to. But that isn't what I mean at all. I mean that it's
harder for a newspaper to be honest than it is for the pastor of a rich
church."
"You can't make me believe that."
"Facts can. But I'm not doing my job. You want to learn the details of
the business, and I'm wasting time trying to throw light into the deep
places where it keeps what it has of conscience. That'll come later. Now
where shall I begin?"
"With the structure of the business."
"All right. A newspaper is divided into three parts. News is the
merchandise which it has to sell. Advertising is the by-product that
pays the bills. The editorial page is a survival. At its best it
analyzes and points out the significance of important news. At its
worst, it is a mouthpiece for the prejudices or the projects of whoever
runs it. Few people are influenced by it. Many are amused by it. It
isn't very important nowadays."
"I intend to make it so on the 'Clarion.'"
Ellis turned upon him a regard which carried with it a verdict of the
most abandoned juvenility, but made no comment. "News sways people more
than editorials," he continued. "That's why there's so much tinkering
with it. I'd like to give you a definition of news, but there isn't any.
News is conventional. It's anything that interests the community. It
isn't the same in any two places. In Arizona a shower is news. In New
Orleans the boll-weevil is news. In Worthington anything about your
father is news: in Denver they don't care a hoot about your father; so,
unless he elopes or dies, or buys a fake Titian, or breaks the
flying-machine record, or lectures on medical quackery, he isn't news
away from home. If Mrs. Festus Willard is bitten by a mad dog, every
dog-chase for the week following is news. When a martyred suffragette
chews a chunk out of the King of England, the local meetings of the
Votes-for-Women Sorority become a live topic. If ever you get to the
point where you can say with certainty, 'This is news; that isn't,'
you'll have no further need for me. You'll be graduated."
"Where does a paper get its news?"
"Through mechanical channels, mostly. If you read all the papers in
town,--and you'll have to do it,--you'll see that they've got just about
the same stuff. Why shouldn't they have? The big, clumsy news-mill
grinds pretty impartially for all of them. There's one news source at
Police Headquarters, another at the City Hall, another in the financial
department, another at the political headquarters, another in the
railroad offices, another at the theaters, another in society, and so
on. At each of these a reporter is stationed. He knows his own kind of
news as it comes to him, ready-made, and, usually, not much else. Then
there's the general, unclassified news of the city that drifts in partly
by luck, partly by favor, partly through the personal connections of the
staff. One paper is differentiated from another principally by getting
or missing this sort of stuff. For instance, the 'Banner' yesterday had
a 'beat' about you. It said that you had come back and were going to
settle down and go into your father's business."
"That's not true."
"Glad to hear it. Your hands will be full with this job. But it was
news. Everybody is interested in the son of our leading citizen. The
'Banner' is strong on that sort of local stuff. I think I'll jack up our
boys in the city room by hinting that there may be a shake-up coming
under the new owner. Knowing they're on probation will make 'em
ambitious."
"And the news of the outside world?"
"Much the same principle as the local matter and just as machine-like.
The 'Clarion' is a unit in a big system, the National News Exchange
Bureau. Not only has the bureau its correspondents in every city and
town of any size, but it covers the national sources of news with
special reporters. Also the international. Theoretically it gives only
the plainest facts, uncolored by any bias. As a matter of fact, it's
pretty crooked. It suppresses news, and even distorts it. It's got a
secret financial propaganda dictated by Wall Street, and its policies
are always open to suspicion."
"Why doesn't it get honest reporters?"
"Oh, its reporters are honest enough. The funny business is done higher
up, in the executive offices."
"Isn't there some other association we can get into?"
"Not very well, just now. The Exchange franchise is worth a lot of
money. Besides," he concluded, yawning, "I don't know that they're any
worse than we are."
Hal got to his feet and walked the length of the office and back, five
times. At the end of this exercise he stood, looking down at his
assistant.
"Ellis, are you trying to plant an impression in my mind?"
"No."
"You're doing it."
"Of what sort?"
"I hardly know. Something subtle, and lurking and underhanded in the
business. I feel as if you had your hands on a curtain that you might
pull aside if you would, but that you don't want to shock my--my
youthfulness."
"Plain facts are what you want, aren't they?"
"Exactly."
"Well, I'm giving them to you as plain as you can understand them. I
don't want to tell you more than you're ready to believe."
"Try it, as an experiment."
"Who do you suppose runs the newspapers of this town?"
"Why, Mr. Vane runs the 'Banner.' Mr. Ford owns the 'Press.' The
'Telegram'--let me see--"
"No; no; no," cried Ellis, waving his hands in front of his face. "I
don't mean the different papers. I mean all of 'em. The 'Clarion,' with
the others."
"Nobody runs them all, surely."
"Three men run them all; Pierce, Gibbs, and Hollenbeck."
"E.M. Pierce?"
"Elias Middleton Pierce."
"I had luncheon with him yesterday, and with Mr. Gibbs--"
"Ah! That's where you got your notions about the strike."
"--and neither of them spoke of any newspaper interests."
"Catch them at it! They're the Publication Committee of the Retail Dry
Goods Union."
"What is that?"
"The combination of local department stores. And, as such, they can
dictate to every Worthington newspaper what it shall or shall not
print."
"Nonsense!"
"Including the 'Clarion.'"
"There you're wrong, anyway."
"The department stores are the biggest users of advertising space in the
city. No paper in town could get along without them. If they want a
piece of news kept out of print, they tell the editor so, and you bet
it's kept out. Otherwise that paper loses the advertising."
"Has it ever been done here?"
"Has it? Get Veltman down to tell you about the Store Employees'
Federation."
"Veltman? What does he know of it? He's in the printing-department,
isn't he?"
"Composing-room; yes. Outside he's a labor agitator and organizer. A bit
of a fanatic, too. But an A1 man all right. Get the composing-room," he
directed through the telephone, "and ask Mr. Veltman to come to Mr.
Surtaine's office."
As the printer entered, Hal was struck again with his physical beauty.
"Did you want to see me?" he asked, looking at the "new boss" with
somber eyes.
"Tell Mr. Surtaine about the newspapers and the Store Federation, Max,"
said Ellis.
The German shook his head. "Nothing new in that," he said, with the very
slightest of accents. "We can't organize them unless the newspapers give
us a little publicity."
"Explain it to me, please. I know nothing about it," said Hal.
"For years we've been trying to organize a union of department store
employees."
"Aren't they well treated?"
"Not quite as well as hogs," returned the other in an impassive voice.
"The girls wanted shorter hours and extra pay for overtime at holiday
time and Old Home Week. Every time we've tried it the stores fire the
organizers among their employees."
"Hardly fair, that."
"This year we tried to get up a public meeting. Reverend Norman Hale
helped us, and Dr. Merritt, the health officer, and a number of women.
It was a good news feature, and that was what we wanted, to get the
movement started. But do you think any paper in town touched it? Not
one."
"But why?"
"E.M. Pierce's orders. He and his crowd."
"Even the 'Clarion,' which is supposed to have labor sympathies?"
"The 'Clarion'!" There was a profundity of contempt in Veltman's voice;
and a deeper bitterness when he snapped his teeth upon a word which
sounded to Hal suspiciously like the Biblical characterization of an
undesirable citizeness of Babylon.
"In any case, they won't give the 'Clarion' any more orders."
"Oh, yes, they will," said Veltman stolidly.
"Then they'll learn something distinctly to their disadvantage."
The splendid, animal-like eyes of the compositor gleamed suddenly. "Do
you mean you're going to run the paper honestly?"
Hal almost recoiled before the impassioned and incredulous surprise in
the question.
"What is 'honestly'?"
"Give the people who buy your paper the straight news they pay for?"
"Certainly, the paper will be run that way."
"As easy as rolling off a log," put in McGuire Ellis, with suspicious
smoothness.
Veltman looked from one to the other. "Yes," he said: and again
"Yes-s-s." But the life had gone from his voice. "Anything more?"
"Nothing, thank you," answered Hal.
"Brains, fire, ambition, energy, skill, everything but balance," said
Ellis, as the door closed. "He's the stuff that martyrs are made of--or
lunatics. Same thing, I guess."
"Isn't he a trouble-maker among the men?"
"No. He's a good workman. Something more, too. Sometimes he writes
paragraphs for the editorial page; and when they're not too radical, I
use 'em. He's brought us in one good feature, that 'Kitty the Cutie'
stuff."
"I'd thought of dropping that. It's so cheap and chewing-gummy."
"Catches on, though. We really ought to run it every day. But the girl
hasn't got time to do it."
"Who is she?"
"Some kid in your father's factory, I understand. Protégée of Veltman's,
He brought her stuff in and we took it right off the bat."
"Well, I'll tell you one thing that is going."
"What?"
"The 'Clarion's motto. 'We Lead: Let Those Who Can Follow.'" Hal
pointed to the "black-face" legend at the top of the first editorial
column.
"Got anything in its place?"
"I thought of 'With Malice Toward None: With Charity for All.'"
"Worked to death. But I've never seen it on a newspaper. Shall I tell
Veltman to set it up in several styles so you may take your pick?"
"Yes. Let's start it in to-morrow."
That night Harrington Surtaine went to bed pondering on the strange
attitude of the newspaper mind toward so matter-of-fact a quality as
honesty; and he dreamed of a roomful of advertisers listening in sodden
silence to his own grandiloquent announcement, "Gentlemen: honesty is
the best policy," while, in a corner, McGuire Ellis and Max Veltman
clasped each other in an apoplectic agony of laughter.
On the following day the blatant cocks of the shrill "Clarion" stood
guard at either end of the paper's new golden text.
CHAPTER X
IN THE WAY OF TRADE
Dr. Surtaine sat in Little George's best chair, beaming upon the world.
By habit, the big man was out of his seat with his dime and nickel in
the bootblack's ready hand, almost coincidently with the final clip-clap
of the rhythmic process. But this morning he lingered, contemplating
with an unobtrusive scrutiny the occupant of the adjoining chair, a
small, angular, hard man, whose brick-red face was cut off in the
segment of an abrupt circle, formed by a low-jammed green hat. This
individual had just briskly bidden his bootblack "hurry it up" in a tone
which meant precisely what it said. The youth was doing so.
"George," said Dr. Surtaine, to the proprietor of the stand.
"Yas, suh."
"Were you ever in St. Jo, Missouri?"
"Yas, suh, Doctah Suhtaine; oncet."
"For long?"
"No, suh."
"Didn't live there, did you?"
"No, suh."
"George," said his interlocutor impressively, "you're lucky."
"Yas, suh," agreed the negro with a noncommittal grin.
"While you can buy accommodations in a graveyard or break into a
penitentiary, don't you ever live in St. Jo Missouri, George."
The man in the adjacent seat half turned toward Dr. Surtaine and looked
him up and down, with a freezing regard.
"It's the sink-hole and sewer-pipe of creation, George. They once
elected a chicken-thief mayor, and he resigned because the town was too
mean to live in. Ever know any folks there, George?"
"Don't have no mem'ry for 'em, Doctah."
"You're lucky again. They're the orneriest, lowest-down, minchin',
pinchin', pizen trash that ever tainted the sweet air of Heaven by
breathing it, George."
"You don' sesso, Doctah Suhtaine, suh."
"I do sess precisely so, George. Does the name McQuiggan mean anything
to you?"
"Don' mean nothin' at-tall to me, Doctah."
"You got away from St. Jo in time, then. Otherwise you might have met
the McQuiggan family, and never been the same afterward."
"Ef you don' stop youah feet a-fidgittin', Boss," interpolated the
neighboring bootblack, addressing the green-hatted man in aggrieved
tones, "I cain't do no good wif this job."
"McQuiggan was the name," continued the volunteer biographer. "The best
you could say of the McQuiggans, George, was that one wasn't much
cusseder than the others, because he couldn't be. Human nature has its
limitations, George."
"It suttinly have, suh."
"But if you had to allow a shade to any of 'em, it would probably have
gone to the oldest brother, L.P. McQuiggan. Barring a scorpion I once
sat down on while in swimming, he was the worst outrage upon the scheme
of creation ever perpetrated by a short-sighted Providence."
"Get out of that chair!"
The little man had shot from his own and was dancing upon the pavement.
"What for?" Dr. Surtaine's tone was that of inquiring innocence.
"To have your fat head knocked off."
With impressive agility for one of his size and years, the challenged
one descended. He advanced, "squared," and suddenly held out a muscular
and plump hand.
"Hullo, Elpy."
"Huh?"
The other glared at him, baleful and baffled.
"Hullo, I said. Don't you know me?"
"No, I don't. Neither will your own family after I get through with
you."
"Come off, Elpy; come off. I licked you once in the old days, and I
guess I could do it now, but I don't want to. Come and have a drink with
old Andy."
"Andy? Andy the Spieler? Andy Certain?"
"Dr. L. André Surtaine, at your service. _Now_, will you shake?"
Still surly, Mr. McQuiggan hung back. "What about that roast?" he
demanded.
"Wasn't sure of you. Twenty years is a long time. But I knew if it was
you you'd want to fight, and I knew if you didn't want to fight it
wasn't you. I'll buy you one in honor of the best little city west of
the Mississip, and the best bunch of sports that ever came out of it,
the McQuiggans of St. Jo, Missouri. Does that go?"
"It goes," replied the representative of the family concisely.
Across the café table Dr. Surtaine contemplated his old acquaintance
with friendly interest.
"The same old scrappy Elpy," he observed. "What's happened to you, since
you used to itinerate with the Iroquois Extract of Life?"
"Plenty."
"You're looking pretty prosperous."
"Have to, in my line."
"What is it?"
Mr. McQuiggan produced a card, with the legend:--
+-----------------------------------------+
| |
| McQuiggan & Straight |
| STREAKY MOUNTAIN COPPER COMPANY |
| Orsten, Palas County, Nev. |
| |
| |
| L.P. MCQUIGGAN ARTHUR STRAIGHT |
| _President_ _Vice-Pres. & Treas._ |
| |
+-----------------------------------------+
"Any good?" queried the Doctor.
"Best undeveloped property in the State."
"Why don't you develop it?"
"Capital."
"Get the capital."
"Will you help me?"
"Sure."
"How?"
"Advertise."
"Advertising costs money."
"And brings two dollars for every one you spend."
"Maybe," retorted the other, with a skeptical air. "But my game is still
talk."
"Talk gets dimes; print gets dollars," said his friend sententiously.
"You have to show me."
"Show you!" cried the Doctor. "I'll write your copy myself."
"_You_ will? What do you know about mining?"
"Not a thing. But there isn't much I don't know about advertising. I've
built up a little twelve millions, plus, on it. And I can sell your
stock like hot cakes through the 'Clarion.'"
"What's the 'Clarion'?"
"My son's newspaper."
"Thereby keeping the graft in the family, eh?"
"Don't be a fool, Elpy. I'm showing you profits. Besides doing you a
good turn, I'd like to bring in some new business to the boy. Now you
take half-pages every other day for a week and a full page Sunday--"
"Pages!" almost squalled the little man. "D'you think I'm made of
money?"
"Elpy," said Dr. Surtaine, abruptly, "do you remember my platform
patter?"
"Like the multiplication table."
"Was it good?"
"Best ever!"
"Well, I'm a slicker proposition with a pen than I ever was with a
spiel. And you're securing my services for nothing. Come around to the
office, man, and let me show you."
Still suspicious, Mr. McQuiggan permitted himself to be led away,
expatiating as he went, upon the unrivaled location and glorious future
of his mining property. From time to time, Dr. Surtaine jotted down an
unostentatious note.
The first view of the Certina building dashed Mr. McQuiggan's
suspicions; his inspection of his old friend's superb office slew them
painlessly.
"Is this all yours, Andy? On the level? Did you do it all on your own?"
"Every bit of it! With my little pen-and-ink. Take a look around the
walls and you'll see how."
He seated himself at his desk and proceeded to jot down, with apparent
carelessness, but in broad, sweeping lines, a type lay-out, while his
guest passed from advertisement to advertisement, in increasing
admiration. Before Old Lame-Boy he paused, absolutely fascinated.
"I thought that'd get you," exulted the host, who, between strokes of
the creative pen had been watching him.
"I've seen it in the newspaper, but never connected it with you. Being
out of the medical line I lost interest. Say, it's a wonder! Did it
fetch 'em?"
"Fetch 'em? It knocked 'em flat. That picture's the foundation of this
business. Talk about suggestion in advertising! He's a regular
hypnotist, Old Lame-Boy is. Plants the suggestion right in the small of
your back, where we want it. Why, Elpy, I've seen a man walk up to that
picture on a bill-board as straight as you or me, take one good, long
look, and go away hanging onto his kidneys, and squirming like a lizard.
Fact! What do you think of that? Genius, I call it: just flat genius, to
produce an effect like that with a few lines and a daub or two of
color."
"Some pull!" agreed Mr. McQuiggan, with professional approval. "And
then--'Try Certina,' eh?"
"For a starter and, for a finisher 'Certina _Cures_.' Shoves the bottle
right into their hands. The first bottle braces 'em. They take another.
By the time they've had half a dozen, they love it."
"Booze?"
"Sure! Flavored and spiced up, nice and tasty. Great for the temperance
trade. _And_ the best little repeater on the market. Now take a look,
Elpy."
He tapped the end of his pen upon the rough sketch of the mining
advertisement, which he had drafted. Mr. McQuiggan bent over it in
study, and fell a swift victim to the magic of the art.
"Why, that would make a wad of bills squirm out of the toe of a
stockin'! It's new game to me. I've always worked the personal touch.
But I'll sure give it a try-out, Andy."
"I guess it's bad!" exulted the other. "I guess I've lost the trick of
tolling the good old dollars in! Take this home and try it on your cash
register! Now, come around and meet the boy."
Thus it was that Editor-in-Chief Harrington Surtaine, in the third week
of his incumbency received a professional call from his father, and a
companion from whose pockets bulged several sheets of paper.
"Shake hands with Mr. McQuiggan, Hal," said the Doctor. "Make a bow when
you meet him, too. He's your first new business for the reformed
'Clarion.'"
"In what way?" asked Hal, meeting a grip like iron from the stranger.
"News?"
"News! I guess not. Business, I said. Real money. Advertising."
"It's like this, Mr. Surtaine," said L.P. McQuiggan, turning his spare,
hard visage toward Hal. "I've got some copper stock to sell--an A1
under-developed proposition; and your father, who's an old pal, tells me
the 'Clarion' can do the business for me. Now, if I can get a good rate
from you, it's a go."
"Mr. Shearson, the advertising manager, is your man. I don't know
anything about advertising rates."
"Then you'd best get busy and learn," cried Dr. Surtaine.
"I'm learning other things."
"For instance?"
"What news is and isn't."
"Look here, Boyee." Dr. Surtaine's voice was surcharged with a
disappointed earnestness. "Put yourself right on this. News is news; any
paper can get it. But advertising is _Money_. Let your editors run the
news part, till you can work into it. _You get next to the door where
the cash comes in._"
In the fervor of his advice he thumped Hal's desk. The thump woke
McGuire Ellis, who had been devoting a spare five minutes to his
favorite pastime. For his behoof, the exponent of policy repeated his
peroration. "Isn't that right, Ellis?" he cried. "You're a practical
newspaper man."
"It's true to type, anyway," grunted Ellis.
"Sure it is!" cried the other, too bent on his own notions to interpret
this comment correctly. "And now, what about a little reading notice for
McQuiggan's proposition?"
"Yes: an interview with me on the copper situation and prospects might
help," put in McQuiggan.
Hal hesitated, looking to Ellis for counsel.
"You've got to do something for an advertiser on a big order like this,
Boyee," urged his father.
"Let's see the copy," put in Ellis. The trained journalistic eye ran
over the sheets. "Lot of gaudy slush about copper mines in general," he
observed, "and not much information on Streaky Mountain."
"It's an undeveloped property," said McQuiggan.
"Strong on geography," continued Ellis. "'In the immediate vicinity,'"
he read from one sheet, "'lie the Copper Monarch Mine paying 40 per cent
dividends, the Deep Gulch Mine, paying 35 per cent, the Three Sisters,
Last Chance, Alkali Spring Mines, all returning upwards of 25 per cent
per annum: and immediately adjacent is the famous Strike-for-the-West
property which enriches its fortunate stockholders to the tune of 75 per
cent a year!' Are you on the same range as the Strike-for-the-West, Mr.
McQuiggan?"
"It's an adjacent property," growled the mining man. "What d'you know
about copper?"
"Oh, I've seen a little mining, myself. And a bit of mining advertising.
That's quite an ad. of yours, McQuiggan."
"I wrote that ad.," said Dr. Surtaine blandly: "and I challenge anybody
to find a single misstatement in it."
"You're safe. There isn't any. And scarcely a single statement. But if
you wrote it, I suppose it goes."
"And the interview, too," rasped McQuiggan.
"It's usual," said Ellis to Hal. "The tail with the hide: the soul with
the body, when you're selling."
"But we're not selling interviews," said Hal uneasily.
"You're getting nearly a thousand dollars' worth of copy, and giving a
bonus that don't cost you anything," said his father. "The papers have
done it for me ever since I've been in business."
"I guess that's right, too," agreed Ellis.
"Why don't you take McQuiggan down to meet your Mr. Shearson, Hal?"
suggested the Doctor. "I'll stay here and round out a couple of other
ideas for his campaign."
Hal had risen from his desk when there was a light knock at the door and
Milly Neal's bright head appeared.
"Hullo!" said Dr. Surtaine. "What's up? Anything wrong at the shop,
Milly?"
The girl walked into the room and stood trimly at ease before the four
men.
"No, Chief," said she. "I understood Mr. Surtaine wanted to see me."
"I?" said Hal blankly, pushing a chair toward her.
"Yes. Didn't you? They told me you left word for me in the city room, to
see you when I came in again. Sometimes I send my copy, so I only just
got the message."
"Miss Neal is 'Kitty the Cutie,'" explained McGuire Ellis.
"Looks it, too," observed L.P. McQuiggan jauntily, addressing the upper
far corner of the room.
Miss Neal looked at him, met a knowing and conscious smile, looked right
through the smile, and looked away again, all with the air of one who
gazes out into nothingness.
"Guess I'll go look up this Shearson person," said Mr. McQuiggan, a
trifle less jauntily. "See you all later."
"I'd no notion you were the writer of the Cutie paragraphs, Milly," said
Dr. Surtaine. "They're lively stuff."
"Nobody has. I'm keeping it dark. It's only a try-out. You _did_ send
for me, didn't you?" she added, turning to Hal.
"Yes. What I had in mind to say to you--that is, to the author--the
writer of the paragraphs," stumbled Hal, "is that they're a little
too--too--"
"Too flip?" queried his father. "That's what makes 'em go."
"If they could be done in a manner not quite so undignified," suggested
the editor-in-chief.
Color rose in the girl's smooth cheek. "You think they're vulgar," she
charged.
"That's rather too harsh a word," he protested.
"You do! I can see it." She flushed an angry red. "I'd rather stop
altogether than have you think that."
"Don't be young," put in McGuire Ellis, with vigor. "Kitty has caught
on. It's a good feature. The paper can't afford to drop it."
"That's right," supplemented Dr. Surtaine. "People are beginning to talk
about those items. They read 'em. I read 'em myself. They've got the go,
the pep. They're different. But, Milly, I didn't even know you could
write."
"Neither did I," said the girl staidly, "till I got to putting down some
of the things I heard the girls say, and stringing them together with
nonsense of my own. One evening I showed some of it to Mr. Veltman, and
he took it here and had it printed."
"I was going to suggest, Mr. Surtaine," said McGuire Ellis formally,
"that we put Miss Kitty on the five-dollar-a-column basis and make her
an every-other-day editorial page feature. I think the stuff's worth
it."
"We can give it a trial," said his principal, a little dubiously, "since
you think so well of it."
"Then, Milly, I suppose you'll be quitting the shop to become a
full-fledged writer," remarked Dr. Surtaine.
"No, indeed, Chief." The girl smiled at him with that frank
friendliness which Hal had noted as informing every relationship between
Dr. Surtaine and the employees of the Certina plant. "I'll stick. The
regular pay envelope looks good to me. And I can do this work after
hours."
"How would it be if I was to put you on half-time, Milly?" suggested her
employer. "You can keep your department going by being there in the
mornings and have your afternoons for the writing."
The girl thanked him demurely but with genuine gratitude.
"Then we'll look for your copy here on alternate days," said Hal. "And I
think I'll give you a desk. As this develops into an editorial feature I
shall want to keep an eye on it and to be in touch with you. Perhaps I
could make suggestions sometimes."
She rose, thanking him, and Hal held open the door for her. Once again
he felt, with a strange sensation, her eyes take hold on his as she
passed him.
"Pretty kid," observed Ellis. "Veltman is crazy about her, they say."
"_Good_ kid, too," added Dr. Surtaine, emphasizing the adjective. "You
might tell Veltman that, whoever he is."
"Tell him, yourself," retorted Ellis with entire good nature. "He isn't
the sort to offer gratuitous information to."
Upon this advice, L.P. McQuiggan reëntered. "All fixed," said he, with
evident satisfaction. "We went to the mat on rates, but Shearson agreed
to give me some good reading notices. Now, I'll beat it. See you
to-night, Andy?"
Dr. Surtaine nodded. "You owe me a commission, Boyee," said he, smiling
at Hal as McQuiggan made his exit. "But I'll let you off this time. I
guess it won't be the last business I bring in to you. Only, don't you
and Ellis go looking every gift horse too hard in the teeth. You might
get bit."
"Shut your eyes and swallow it and ask no questions, if it's good, eh,
Doctor?" said McGuire Ellis. "That's the motto for your practice."
"Right you are, my boy. And it's the motto of sound business. What is
business?" he continued, soaring aloft upon the wings of a Pæan of
Policy. "Why, business is a deal between you and me in which I give you
my goods and a pleasant word, and you give me your dollar and a polite
reply. Some folks always want to know where the dollar came from. Not
me! I'm satisfied to know that its coming to me. Money has wings, and if
you throw stones at it, it'll fly away fast. And you want to remember,"
he concluded with the fervor of honest conviction, "that a newspaper
can't be quite right, any more than a man can, unless it makes its own
living. Well. I'm not going to preach any more. So long, boys."
"What do you think of it, Mr. Surtaine?" inquired McGuire Ellis, after
the lecturer had gone his way. "Pretty sound sense, eh?"
"I wonder just what you mean by that, Ellis. Not what you say,
certainly."
But Ellis only laughed and turned to his "flimsy."
Meantime the editor of the "Clarion" was being quietly but persistently
beset by another sermonizer, less cocksure of text than the Sweet Singer
of Policy, but more subtle in influence. This was Miss Esmé Elliot.
Already, the half-jocular partnership undertaken at the outset of their
acquaintance had developed into a real, if somewhat indeterminate
connection. Esmé found her new acquaintance interesting both for himself
and for his career. Her set in general considered the ripening
friendship merely "another of Esmé's flirtations," and variously
prophesied the dénouement. To the girl's own mind it was not a
flirtation at all. She was (she assured herself) genuinely absorbed in
the development of a new mission in which she aspired to be influential.
That she already exercised a strong sway of personality over Hal
Surtaine, she realized. Indeed, in the superb confidence of her charm,
she would have been astonished had it been otherwise. Just where her
interest in the newly adventured professional field ended, and in
Harrington Surtaine, the man, began, she would have been puzzled to say.
Kathleen Pierce had bluntly questioned her on the subject.
"Yes, of course I like him," said Esmé frankly. "He's interesting and
he's a gentleman, and he has a certain force about him, and he's"--she
paused, groping for a characterization--"he's unexpected."
"What gets me," said Kathleen, in her easy slang, "is that he never
pulls any knighthood-in-flower stuff, yet you somehow feel it's there.
Know what I mean? There's a scrapper behind that nice-boy smile."
"He hasn't scrapped with me, yet, Kathie," smiled the beauty.
"Don't let him," advised the other. "It mightn't be safe. Still, I
suppose you understand him by now, down to the ground."
"Indeed I do not. Didn't I tell you he was unexpected? He has an
uncomfortable trick," complained Miss Elliot, "just when everything is
smooth and lovely, of suddenly leveling those gray-blue eyes of his at
you, like two pistols. 'Throw up your hands and tell me what you really
mean!' One doesn't always want to tell what one really means."
"Bet you have to with him, sooner or later," returned her friend.
This conversation took place at the Vanes' _al fresco_ tea, to which Hal
came for a few minutes, late in the afternoon of his father's visit with
McQuiggan, mainly in the hope of seeing Esmé Elliot. Within five minutes
after his arrival, Worthington society was frowning, or smiling,
according as it was masculine or feminine, at their backs, as they
strolled away toward the garden. Miss Esmé was feeling a bit petulant,
perhaps because of Kathie Pierce's final taunt.
"I think you aren't living up to our partnership," she accused.
"Is it a partnership, where one party is absolute slave to the other's
slightest wish?" he smiled.
"There! That is exactly it. You treat me like a child."
"I don't think of you as a child, I assure you."
"You listen to all I say with pretended deference, and smile and--and go
your own way with inevitable motion."
"Wherein have I failed in my allegiance?" asked Hal, courteously
concerned. "Haven't we published everything about all the charities that
you're interested in?"
"Oh, yes. So far as that goes. But the paper itself doesn't seem to
change any. It's got the same tone it always had."
"What's wrong with its tone?" The eyes were leveled at her now.
"Speaking frankly, it's tawdry. It's lurid. It's--well, yellow."
"A matter of method. You're really more interested, then, in the way we
present news than in the news we present."
"I don't know anything about news, itself. But I don't see why a
newspaper run by a gentleman shouldn't be in good taste."
"Nor do I. Except that those things take time. I suppose I've got to get
in touch with my staff before I can reform their way of writing the
paper."
"Haven't you done that yet?"
"I simply haven't had time."
"Then I'll make you a nice present of a very valuable suggestion. Give a
luncheon to your employees, and invite all the editors and reporters.
Make a little speech to them and tell them what you intend to do, and
get them to talk it over and express opinions. That's the way to get
things done. I do it with my mission class. And, by the way, don't make
it a grand banquet at one of the big hotels. Have it in some place where
the men are used to eating. They'll feel more at home and you'll get
more out of them."
"Will you come?"
"No. But you shall come up to the house and report fully on it."
Had Miss Esmé Elliot, experimentalist in human motives, foreseen to what
purpose her ingenious suggestion was to work out, she might well have
retracted her complaint of lack of real influence; for this casual
conversation was the genesis of the Talk-it-Over Breakfast, an
institution which potently affected the future of the "Clarion" and its
young owner.
CHAPTER XI
THE INITIATE
Within a month after Hal's acquisition of the "Clarion," Dr. Surtaine
had become a daily caller at the office. "Just to talk things over," was
his explanation of these incursions, which Hal always welcomed, no
matter how busy he might be. Advice was generally the form which the
visitor's talk took; sometimes warning; not infrequently suggestions of
greater or less value. Always his counsel was for peace and policy.
"Keep in with the business element, Boyee. Remember all the time that
Worthington is a business city, the liveliest little business city
between New York and Chicago. Business made it. Business runs it.
Business is going to keep on running it. Anybody who works on a
different principle, I don't care whether it's in politics or journalism
or the pulpit, is going to get hurt. I don't deny you've braced up the
'Clarion.' People are beginning to talk about it already. But the best
men, the moneyed men, are holding off. They aren't sure of you yet.
Sometimes I'm not sure myself. Every now and then the paper takes a
stand I don't like. It goes too far. You've put ginger into it. I have
to admit that. And ginger's a good thing, but sugar catches more flies."
The notion of a breakfast to the staff met with the Doctor's instant
approval.
"That's the idea!" said he "I'll come to it, myself. Lay down your
general scheme and policy to 'em. Get 'em in sympathy with it. If any of
'em aren't in sympathy with it, get rid of those. Kickers never did any
business any good. You'll get plenty of kicks from outside. Then, when
the office gets used to your way of doing things, you can quit wasting
so much time on the news and editorial end."
"But that's what makes the paper, Dad."
"Get over that idea. You hire men to get out the paper. Let 'em earn
their pay while you watch the door where the dollars come in.
Advertising, my son: that's the point to work at. In a way I'm sorry you
let Sterne out."
The ex-editor had left, a fortnight before, on a basis agreeable to
himself and Hal, and McGuire Ellis had taken over his duties.
"Certainly you had no reason to like Sterne, Dad."
"For all that, he knew his job. Everything Sterne did had a dollar
somewhere in the background. Even his blackmailing game. He worked with
the business office, and he took his orders on that basis. Now if you
had some man whom you could turn over this news end to while you're
building up a sound advertising policy--"
"How about McGuire Ellis?"
Dr. Surtaine glanced over to the window corner where the associate
editor was somnambulantly fighting a fly for the privilege of continuing
a nap.
"Too much of a theorist: too much of a knocker."
"He's taught me what little I know about this business," said Hal. "Hi!
Wake up, Ellis. Do you know you've got to make a speech in an hour? This
is the day of the Formal Feed."
"Hoong!" grunted Ellis, arousing himself. "Speech? I can't make a
speech. Make it yourself."
"I'm going to."
"What are you going to talk about?"
"Well, I might borrow your text and preach them a sermon on honesty in
journalism. Seriously, I think the whole paper has degenerated to low
ideals, and if I put it to them straight, that every man of them,
reporter, copy-reader, or editor, has got to measure up to an absolutely
straight standard of honesty--"
"They'll throw the tableware at you," said McGuire Ellis quietly: "at
least they ought to, if they don't."
The two Surtaines stared at him in surprise.
"Who are you," continued the journalist, "to talk standards of honesty
in journalism to those boys?"
"He's their boss: that's all he is," said Dr. Surtaine weightily.
"Let him set the example, then, jack the paper up where it belongs, and
there'll be no difficulty with the men who write it."
"But, Mac, you've been hammering at me about the crookedness of
journalism in Worthington from the first."
"All right. Crookedness there is. Where does it come from? From the men
in control, mostly. Let me tell you something, you two: there's hardly a
reporter in this city who isn't more honest than the paper he works
for."
"Hifalutin nonsense," said Dr. Surtaine.
"From your point of view. You're an outsider. It's outsiders that make
the newspaper game as bad as it is. Look at 'em in this town. Who owns
the 'Banner'? A political boss. Who owns the 'News'? A brewer. The
'Star'? A promoter, and a pretty scaly one at that. The 'Observer'
belongs body and soul to an advertising agency, and the 'Telegraph' is
controlled by the banks. And one and all of 'em take their orders from
the Dry Goods Union, which means Elias M. Pierce, because they live on
its advertising."
"Why not? That's business," said Dr. Surtaine.
"Are we talking about business? I thought it was standards. What do
those men know about the ethics of journalism? If you put the thing up
to him, like as not E.M. Pierce would tell you that an ethic is
something a doctor gives you to make you sleep."
"How about the 'Clarion,' Mac?" said Hal, smili
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