I foresee that we shall make an ideal team. Together, we will toil
early and late till we whoop up this domestic journal into a shining
model of what a domestic journal should be. What that is, at present, I
do not exactly know. Excursion trains will be run from the Middle West
to see this domestic journal. Visitors from Oshkosh will do it before
going on to Grant's tomb. What exactly is your name?"
Betty hesitated. Yes, perhaps it would be better. "Brown," she said.
"Mine is Smith. The smiling child in the outer office is Pugsy Maloney,
one of our most prominent citizens. Homely in appearance, perhaps, but
one of us. You will get to like Comrade Maloney. And now, to touch on a
painful subject - work. Would you care to start in now, or have you any
other engagements? Perhaps you wish to see the sights of this beautiful
little city before beginning? You would prefer to start in now?
Excellent. You could not have come at a more suitable time, for I was
on the very point of sallying out to purchase about twenty-five cents'
worth of lunch. We editors, Comrade Brown, find that our tissues need
constant restoration, such is the strenuous nature of our duties. You
will find one or two letters on that table. Good-by, then, for the
present."
He picked up his hat, smoothed it carefully and with a courtly
inclination of his head, left the room.
Betty sat down, and began to think. So she was really earning her own
living! It was a stimulating thought. She felt a little bewildered. She
had imagined something so different. Mrs. Oakley had certainly said
that _Peaceful Moments_ was a small paper, but despite that, her
imagination had conjured up visions of bustle and activity, and a
peremptory, overdriven editor, snapping out words of command. Smith,
with his careful speech and general air of calm detachment from the
noisy side of life, created an atmosphere of restfulness. If this was a
sample of life in the office, she thought, the paper had been well
named. She felt soothed and almost happy.
Interesting and exciting things, New York things, began to happen at
once. To her, meditating, there entered Pugsy Maloney, the guardian of
the gate of this shrine of Peace, a nonchalant youth of about fifteen,
with a freckled, mask-like face, the expression of which never varied,
bearing in his arms a cat. The cat was struggling violently, but he
appeared quite unconscious of it. Its existence did not seem to occur
to him.
"Say!" said Pugsy.
Betty was fond of cats.
"Oh, don't hurt her!" she cried anxiously.
Master Maloney eyed the cat as if he were seeing it for the first time.
"I wasn't hoitin' her," he said, without emotion. "Dere was two fresh
kids in the street sickin' a dawg on to her. And I comes up and says,
'G'wan! What do youse t'ink youse doin', fussin' de poor dumb animal?'
An' one of de guys, he says, 'G'wan! Who do youse t'ink youse is?' An'
I says, 'I'm de guy what's goin' to swat youse on de coco, smarty, if
youse don't quit fussin' de poor dumb animal.' So wit' dat he makes a
break at swattin' me one, but I swats him one, an' I swats de odder
feller one, an' den I swats dem bote some more, an' I gits de kitty,
an' I brings her in here, cos I t'inks maybe youse'll look after her. I
can't be boddered myself. Cats is foolishness."
And, having finished this Homeric narrative, Master Maloney fixed an
expressionless eye on the ceiling, and was silent.
"How splendid of you, Pugsy!" cried Betty. "She might have been killed,
poor thing."
"She had it pretty fierce," admitted Master Maloney, gazing
dispassionately at the rescued animal, which had escaped from his
clutch and taken up a strong position on an upper shelf of the
bookcase.
"Will you go out and get her some milk, Pugsy? She's probably starving.
Here's a quarter. Will you keep the change?"
"Sure thing," assented Master Maloney.
He strolled slowly out, while Betty, mounting a chair, proceeded to
chirrup and snap her fingers in the effort to establish the foundations
of an _entente cordiale_ with the cat.
By the time Pugsy returned, carrying a five-cent bottle of milk, the
animal had vacated the shelf, and was sitting on the table, polishing
her face. The milk having been poured into the lid of a tobacco tin, in
lieu of a saucer, she suspended her operations and adjourned for
refreshments, Pugsy, having no immediate duties on hand, concentrated
himself on the cat.
"Say!" he said.
"Well?"
"Dat kitty. Pipe de leather collar she's wearin'."
Betty had noticed earlier in the proceedings that a narrow leather
collar encircled the animal's neck.
"Guess I know where dat kitty belongs. Dey all has dose collars. I
guess she's one of Bat Jarvis's kitties. He's got twenty-t'ree of dem,
and dey all has dose collars."
"Bat Jarvis?"
"Sure."
"Who is he?"
Pugsy looked at her incredulously.
"Say! Ain't youse never heard of Bat Jarvis? He's - he's Bat Jarvis."
"Do you know him?"
"Sure, I knows him."
"Does he live near here?"
"Sure, he lives near here."
"Then I think the best thing for you to do is to run round and tell him
that I am taking care of his cat, and that he had better come and fetch
it. I must be getting on with my work, or I shall never finish it."
She settled down to type the letters Smith had indicated. She attacked
her task cautiously. She was one of those typists who are at their best
when they do not have to hurry.
She was putting the finishing touches to the last of the batch, when
there was a shuffling of feet in the outer room, followed by a knock on
the door. The next moment there entered a short, burly young man,
around whom there hung, like an aroma, an indescribable air of
toughness, partly due, perhaps, to the fact that he wore his hair in a
well-oiled fringe almost down to his eyebrows, thus presenting the
appearance of having no forehead at all. His eyes were small and set
close together. His mouth was wide, his jaw prominent. Not, in short,
the sort of man you would have picked out on sight as a model citizen.
He blinked furtively, as his eyes met Betty's, and looked round the
room. His face lighted up as he saw the cat.
"Say!" he said, stepping forward, and touching the cat's collar.
"Ma'am, mine!"
"Are you Mr. Jarvis?" asked Betty.
The visitor nodded, not without a touch of complacency, as of a monarch
abandoning his incognito.
For Mr. Jarvis was a celebrity.
By profession he was a dealer in animals, birds, and snakes. He had a
fancier's shop on Groome Street, in the heart of the Bowery. This was
on the ground floor. His living abode was in the upper story of that
house, and it was there that he kept the twenty-three cats whose necks
were adorned with leather collars.
But it was not the fact that he possessed twenty-three cats with
leather collars that had made Mr. Jarvis a celebrity. A man may win a
local reputation, if only for eccentricity, by such means. Mr. Jarvis'
reputation was far from being purely local. Broadway knew him, and the
Tenderloin. Tammany Hall knew him. Long Island City knew him. For Bat
Jarvis was the leader of the famous Groome Street Gang, the largest and
most influential of the four big gangs of the East Side.
To Betty, so little does the world often know of its greatest men, he
was merely a decidedly repellent-looking young man in unbecoming
clothes. But his evident affection for the cat gave her a feeling of
fellowship toward him. She beamed upon him, and Mr. Jarvis, who was
wont to face the glare of rivals without flinching, avoided her eye and
shuffled with embarrassment.
"I'm so glad she's safe!" said Betty. "There were two boys teasing her
in the street. I've been giving her some milk."
Mr. Jarvis nodded, with his eyes on the floor.
There was a pause. Then he looked up, and, fixing his gaze some three
feet above her head, spoke.
"Say!" he said, and paused again. Betty waited expectantly.
He relaxed into silence again, apparently thinking.
"Say!" he said. "Ma'am, obliged. Fond of de kit. I am."
"She's a dear," said Betty, tickling the cat under the ear.
"Ma'am," went on Mr. Jarvis, pursuing his theme, "obliged. Sha'n't
fergit it. Any time you're in bad, glad to be of service. Bat Jarvis.
Groome Street. Anybody'll show youse where I live."
He paused, and shuffled his feet; then, tucking the cat more firmly
under his arm, left the room. Betty heard him shuffling downstairs.
He had hardly gone, when the door opened again, and Smith came in.
"So you have had company while I was away?" he said. "Who was the
grandee with the cat? An old childhood's friend? Was he trying to sell
the animal to us?"
"That was Mr. Bat Jarvis," said Betty.
Smith looked interested.
"Bat! What was he doing here?"
Betty related the story of the cat. Smith nodded thoughtfully.
"Well," he said, "I don't know that Comrade Jarvis is precisely the
sort of friend I would go out of my way to select. Still, you never
know what might happen. He might come in useful. And now, let us
concentrate ourselves tensely on this very entertaining little journal
of ours, and see if we cannot stagger humanity with it."
CHAPTER XIV
A CHANGE OF POLICY
The feeling of tranquillity which had come to Betty on her first
acquaintance with _Peaceful Moments_ seemed to deepen as the days
went by, and with each day she found the sharp pain at her heart less
vehement. It was still there, but it was dulled. The novelty of her
life and surroundings kept it in check. New York is an egotist. It will
suffer no divided attention. "Look at me!" says the voice of the city
imperiously, and its children obey. It snatches their thoughts from
their inner griefs, and concentrates them on the pageant that rolls
unceasingly from one end of the island to the other. One may despair in
New York, but it is difficult to brood on the past; for New York is the
City of the Present, the City of Things that are Going On.
To Betty everything was new and strange. Her previous acquaintance with
the metropolis had not been extensive. Mr. Scobell's home - or, rather,
the house which he owned in America - was on the outskirts of
Philadelphia, and it was there that she had lived when she was not
paying visits. Occasionally, during horse-show week, or at some other
time of festivity, she had spent a few days with friends who lived in
Madison or upper Fifth Avenue, but beyond that, New York was a closed
book to her.
It would have been a miracle in the circumstances, if John and Mervo
and the whole of the events since the arrival of the great cable had
not to some extent become a little dream-like. When she was alone at
night, and had leisure to think, the dream became a reality once more;
but in her hours of work, or what passed for work in the office of
_Peaceful Moments_, and in the hours she spent walking about the
streets and observing the ways of this new world of hers, it faded.
Everything was so bright and busy! Every moment had its fresh interest.
And, above all, there was the sense of adventure. She was twenty-four;
she had health and an imagination; and almost unconsciously she was
stimulated by the thrill of being for the first time in her life
genuinely at large. The child's love of hiding dies hard in us. To
Betty, to walk abroad in New York in the midst of hurrying crowds, just
Betty Brown - one of four million and no longer the beautiful Miss
Silver of the society column, was to taste the romance of disguise, or
invisibility.
During office hours she came near to complete contentment. To an expert
stenographer the amount of work to be done would have seemed
ridiculously small, but Betty, who liked plenty of time for a task,
generally managed to make it last comfortably through the day.
This was partly owing to the fact that her editor, when not actually at
work himself, was accustomed to engage her in conversation, and to keep
her so engaged until the entrance of Pugsy Maloney heralded the arrival
of some caller.
Betty liked Smith. His odd ways, his conversation, and his extreme
solicitude for his clothes amused her. She found his outlook on life
refreshing. Smith was an optimist. Whatever cataclysm might occur, he
never doubted for a moment that he would be comfortably on the summit
of the debris when all was over. He amazed Betty with his stories of
his reportorial adventures. He told them for the most part as humorous
stories at his own expense, but the fact remained that in a
considerable proportion of them he had only escaped a sudden and
violent death by adroitness or pure good luck. His conversation opened
up a new world to Betty. She began to see that in America, and
especially in New York, anything may happen to anybody. She looked on
Smith with new eyes.
"But surely all this," she said one morning, after he had come to the
end of the story of a highly delicate piece of interviewing work in
connection with some Cumberland Mountains feudists, "surely all this - "
She looked round the room.
"Domesticity?" suggested Smith.
"Yes," said Betty. "Surely it all seems rather tame to you?"
Smith sighed.
"Comrade Brown," he said, "you have touched the spot with an unerring
finger."
Since Mr. Renshaw's departure, the flatness of life had come home to
Smith with renewed emphasis. Before, there had always been the quiet
entertainment of watching the editor at work, but now he was feeling
restless. Like John at Mervo, he was practically nothing but an
ornament. _Peaceful Moments_, like Mervo, had been set rolling and
had continued to roll on almost automatically. The staff of regular
contributors sent in their various pages. There was nothing for the man
in charge to do. Mr. Renshaw had been one of those men who have a
genius for being as busy over nothing as if it were some colossal work,
but Smith had not that gift. He liked something that he could grip and
that gripped him. He was becoming desperately bored. He felt like a
marooned sailor on a barren rock of domesticity.
A visitor who called at the office at this time did nothing to remove
this sensation of being outside everything that made life worth living.
Betty, returning to the office one afternoon, found Smith in the
doorway, just parting from a thickset young man. There was a rather
gloomy expression on the thickset young man's face.
Smith, too, she noted, when they were back in the inner office, seemed
to have something on his mind. He was strangely silent.
"Comrade Brown," he said at last, "I wish this little journal of ours
had a sporting page."
Betty laughed.
"Less ribaldry," protested Smith pained. "This is a sad affair. You saw
the man I was talking to? That was Kid Brady. I used to know him when I
was out West. He wants to fight anyone in the country at a hundred and
thirty-three pounds. We all have our hobbies. That is Comrade Brady's."
"Is he a boxer?"
"He would like to be. Out West, nobody could touch him. He's in the
championship class. But he has been pottering about New York for a
month without being able to get a fight. If we had a sporting page on
_Peaceful Moments_ we could do him some good, but I don't see how
we can write him up," said Smith, picking up a copy of the paper, and
regarding it gloomily, "in 'Moments in the Nursery' or 'Moments with
Budding Girlhood.'"
He put up his eyeglass, and stared at the offending journal with the
air of a vegetarian who has found a caterpillar in his salad.
Incredulity, dismay, and disgust fought for precedence in his
expression.
"B. Henderson Asher," he said severely, "ought to be in some sort of a
home. Cain killed Abel for telling him that story."
He turned to another page, and scrutinized it with deepening gloom.
"Is Luella Granville Waterman by any chance a friend of yours, Comrade
Brown? No? I am glad. For it seems to me that for sheer, concentrated
piffle, she is in a class by herself."
He read on for a few moments in silence, then looked up and fixed Betty
with his monocle. There was righteous wrath in his eyes.
"And people," he said, "are paying money for this! _Money!_ Even
now they are sitting down and writing checks for a year's subscription.
It isn't right! It's a skin game. I am assisting in a carefully planned
skin game!"
"But perhaps they like it," suggested Betty.
Smith shook his head.
"It is kind of you to try and soothe my conscience, but it is useless.
I see my position too clearly. Think of it, Comrade Brown! Thousands of
poor, doddering, half-witted creatures in Brooklyn and Flatbush, who
ought not really to have control of their own money at all, are getting
buncoed out of whatever it is per annum in exchange for - how shall I
put it in a forcible yet refined and gentlemanly manner? - for cat's
meat of this description. Why, selling gold bricks is honest compared
with it. And I am temporarily responsible for the black business!"
He extended a lean hand with melodramatic suddenness toward Betty. The
unexpectedness of the movement caused her to start back in her chair
with a little exclamation of surprise. Smith nodded with a kind of
mournful satisfaction.
"Exactly!" he said. "As I expected! You shrink from me. You avoid my
polluted hand. How could it be otherwise? A conscientious green-goods
man would do the same." He rose from his seat. "Your attitude," he
said, "confirms me in a decision that has been in my mind for some
days. I will no longer calmly accept this terrible position. I will try
to make amends. While I am in charge, I will give our public something
worth reading. All these Watermans and Ashers and Parslows must go!"
"Go!"
"Go!" repeated Smith firmly. "I have been thinking it over for days.
You cannot look me in the face, Comrade Brown, and say that there is a
single feature which would not be better away. I mean in the paper, not
in my face. Every one of these punk pages must disappear. Letters must
be despatched at once, informing Julia Burdett Parslow and the others,
and in particular B. Henderson Asher, who, on brief acquaintance,
strikes me as an ideal candidate for a lethal chamber - that, unless
they cease their contributions instantly, we shall call up the police
reserves. Then we can begin to move."
Betty, like most of his acquaintances, seldom knew whether Smith was
talking seriously or not. She decided to assume, till he should dismiss
the idea, that he meant what he said.
"But you can't!" she exclaimed.
"With your kind cooperation, nothing easier. You supply the mechanical
work. I will compose the letters. First, B. Henderson Asher. 'Dear
Sir' - "
"But - " she fell back on her original remark - "but you can't. What will
Mr. Renshaw say when he comes back?"
"Sufficient unto the day. I have a suspicion that he will be the
first to approve. His vacation will have made him see things
differently - purified him, as it were. His conscience will be alive
once more."
"But - "
"Why should we worry ourselves because the end of this venture is
wrapped in obscurity? Why, Columbus didn't know where he was going to
when he set out. All he knew was some highly interesting fact about an
egg. What that was, I do not at the moment recall, but I understand it
acted on Columbus like a tonic. We are the Columbuses of the
journalistic world. Full steam ahead, and see what happens. If Comrade
Renshaw is not pleased, why, I shall have been a martyr to a good
cause. It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done,
so to speak. Why should I allow possible inconvenience to myself to
stand in the way of the happiness which we propose to inject into those
Brooklyn and Flatbush homes? Are you ready then, once more? 'Dear
Sir - '"
Betty gave in.
When the letters were finished, she made one more objection.
"They are certain to call here and make a fuss," she said, "Mr. Asher
and the rest."
"You think they will not bear the blow with manly fortitude?"
"I certainly do. And I think it's hard on them, too. Suppose they
depend for a living on what they make from _Peaceful Moments?_"
"They don't," said Smith reassuringly. "I've looked into that. Have no
pity for them. They are amateurs - degraded creatures of substance who
take the cocktails out of the mouths of deserving professionals. B.
Henderson Asher, for instance, is largely interested in gents'
haberdashery. And so with the others. We touch their pride, perhaps,
but not their purses."
Betty's soft heart was distinctly relieved by the information.
"I see," she said. "But suppose they do call, what will you do? It will
be very unpleasant."
Smith pondered.
"True," he said. "True. I think you are right there. My nervous system
is so delicately attuned that anything in the shape of a brawl would
reduce it to a frazzle. I think that, for this occasion only, we will
promote Comrade Maloney to the post of editor. He is a stern, hard,
rugged man who does not care how unpopular he is. Yes, I think that
would be best."
He signed the letters with a firm hand, "per pro P. Maloney, editor."
Then he lit a cigarette, and leaned back in his chair.
"An excellent morning's work," he said. "Already I begin to feel the
dawnings of a new self-respect."
Betty, thinking the thing over, a little dazed by the rapidity of
Smith's method of action, had found a fresh flaw in the scheme.
"If you send Mr. Asher and the others away, how are you going to bring
the paper out at all? You can't write it all yourself."
Smith looked at her with benevolent admiration.
"She thinks of everything," he murmured. "That busy brain is never
still. No, Comrade Brown, I do not propose to write the whole paper
myself. I do not shirk work when it gets me in a corner and I can't
side-step, but there are limits. I propose to apply to a few of my late
companions of Park Row, bright boys who will be delighted to come
across with red-hot stuff for a moderate fee."
"And the proprietor of the paper? Won't he make any objection?"
Smith shook his head with a touch of reproof.
"You seem determined to try to look on the dark side. Do you insinuate
that we are not acting in the proprietor's best interests? When he gets
his check for the receipts, after I have handled the paper awhile, he
will go singing about the streets. His beaming smile will be a byword.
Visitors will be shown it as one of the sights. His only doubt will be
whether to send his money to the bank or keep it in tubs and roll in
it. And anyway," he added, "he's in Europe somewhere, and never sees
the paper, sensible man."
He scratched a speck of dust off his coat-sleeve with his finger nail.
"This is a big thing," he resumed. "Wait till you see the first number
of the new series. My idea is that _Peaceful Moments_ shall become
a pretty warm proposition. Its tone shall be such that the public will
wonder why we do not print it on asbestos. We shall comment on all the
live events of the week - murders, Wall Street scandals, glove fights,
and the like, in a manner which will make our readers' spines thrill.
Above all, we shall be the guardians of the people's rights. We shall
be a spot light, showing up the dark places and bringing into
prominence those who would endeavor in any way to put the people in
Dutch. We shall detect the wrongdoer, and hand him such a series of
resentful wallops that he will abandon his little games and become a
model citizen. In this way we shall produce a bright, readable little
sheet which will make our city sit up and take notice. I think so. I
think so. And now I must be hustling about and seeing our new
contributors. There is no time to waste."
CHAPTER XV
THE HONEYED WORD
The offices of Peaceful Moments were in a large building in a street
off Madison Avenue. They consisted of a sort of outer lair, where Pugsy
Maloney spent his time reading tales of life on the prairies and
heading off undesirable visitors; a small room, into which desirable
but premature visitors were loosed, to wait their turn for admission
into the Presence; and a larger room beyond, which was the editorial
sanctum.
Smith, returning from luncheon on the day following his announcement of
the great change, found both Betty and Pugsy waiting in the outer lair,
evidently with news of import.
"Mr. Smith," began Betty.
"Dey're in dere," said Master Maloney with his customary terseness.
"Who, exactly?" asked Smith.
"De whole bunch of dem."
Smith inspected Pugsy through his eyeglass. "Can you give me any
particulars?" he asked patiently. "You are well-meaning, but vague,
Comrade Maloney. Who are in there?"
"About 'steen of dem!" said Pugsy.
"Mr. Asher," said Betty, "and Mr. Philpotts, and all the rest of them."
She struggled for a moment, but, unable to resist the temptation,
added, "I told you so."
A faint smile appeared upon Smith's face.
"Dey just butted in," said Master Maloney, resuming his narrative. "I
was sittin' here, readin' me book, when de foist of de guys blows in.
'Boy,' says he, 'is de editor in?' 'Nope,' I says. 'I'll go in and
wait,' says he. 'Nuttin' doin',' says I. 'Nix on de goin'-in act.' I
might as well have saved me breat! In he butts. In about t'ree minutes
along comes another gazebo. 'Boy,' says he, 'is de editor in?' 'Nope,'
I says. 'I'll wait,' says he, lightin' out for de door, and in he
butts. Wit' dat I sees de proposition's too fierce for muh. I can't
keep dese big husky guys out if dey bucks center like dat. So when de
rest of de bunch comes along, I don't try to give dem de trun down. I
says, 'Well, gent,' I says, 'it's up to youse. De editor ain't in, but,
if you feels lonesome, push t'roo. Dere's plenty dere to keep youse
company. I can't be boddered!'"
"And what more could you have said?" agreed Smith approvingly. "Tell
me, did these gentlemen appear to be gay and light-hearted, or did they
seem to be looking for someone with a hatchet?"
"Dey was hoppin' mad, de whole bunch of dem."
"Dreadfully," attested Betty.
"As I suspected," said Smith, "but we must not repine. These trifling
contretemps are the penalties we pay for our high journalistic aims. I
fancy that with the aid of the diplomatic smile and the honeyed word I
may manage to win out. Will you come and give me your moral support,
Comrade Brown?"
He opened the door of the inner room for Betty, and followed her in.
Master Maloney's statement that "about 'steen" visitors had arrived
proved to be a little exaggerated. There were five men in the room.
As Smith entered, every eye was turned upon him. To an outside
spectator he would have seemed rather like a very well-dressed Daniel
introduced into a den of singularly irritable lions. Five pairs of eyes
were smoldering with a long-nursed resentment. Five brows were
corrugated with wrathful lines. Such, however, was the simple majesty
of Smith's demeanor that for a moment there was dead silence. Not a
word was spoken as he paced, wrapped in thought, to the editorial
chair. Stillness brooded over the room as he carefully dusted that
piece of furniture, and, having done so to his satisfaction, hitched up
the knees of his trousers and sank gracefully into a sitting position.
This accomplished, he looked up and started. He gazed round the room.
"Ha! I am observed!" he murmured.
The words broke the spell. Instantly the five visitors burst
simultaneously into speech.
"Are you the acting editor of this paper?"
"I wish to have a word with you, sir."
"Mr. Maloney, I presume?"
"Pardon me!"
"I should like a few moments' conversation."
The start was good and even, but the gentleman who said "Pardon me!"
necessarily finished first, with the rest nowhere.
Smith turned to him, bowed, and fixed him with a benevolent gaze
through his eyeglass.
"Are you Mr. Maloney, may I ask?" enquired the favored one.
The others paused for the reply. Smith shook his head. "My name is
Smith."
"Where is Mr. Maloney?"
Smith looked across at Betty, who had seated herself in her place by
the typewriter.
"Where did you tell me Mr. Maloney had gone to, Miss Brown? Ah, well,
never mind. Is there anything _I_ can do for you, gentlemen? I am
on the editorial staff of this paper."
"Then, maybe," said a small, round gentleman who, so far, had done only
chorus work, "you can tell me what all this means? My name is Waterman,
sir. I am here on behalf of my wife, whose name you doubtless know."
"Correct me if I am wrong," said Smith, "but I should say it, also, was
Waterman."
"Luella Granville Waterman, sir!" said the little man proudly. "My
wife," he went on, "has received this extraordinary communication from
a man signing himself P. Maloney. We are both at a loss to make head or
tail of it."
"It seems reasonably clear to me," said Smith, reading the letter.
"It's an outrage. My wife has been a contributor to this journal since
its foundation. We are both intimate friends of Mr. Renshaw, to whom my
wife's work has always given complete satisfaction. And now, without
the slightest warning, comes this peremptory dismissal from P. Maloney.
Who is P. Maloney? Where is Mr. Renshaw?"
The chorus burst forth. It seemed that that was what they all wanted to
know. Who was P. Maloney? Where was Mr. Renshaw?
"I am the Reverend Edwin T. Philpott, sir," said a cadaverous-looking
man with light blue eyes and a melancholy face. "I have contributed
'Moments of Meditation' to this journal for some considerable time."
Smith nodded.
"I know, yours has always seemed to me work which the world will not
willingly let die."
The Reverend Edwin's frosty face thawed into a bleak smile.
"And yet," continued Smith, "I gather that P. Maloney, on the other
hand, actually wishes to hurry on its decease. Strange!"
A man in a serge suit, who had been lurking behind Betty, bobbed into
the open.
"Where's this fellow Maloney? P. Maloney. That's the man we want to
see. I've been working for this paper without a break, except when I
had the grip, for four years, and now up comes this Maloney fellow, if
you please, and tells me in so many words that the paper's got no use
for me."
"These are life's tragedies," sighed Smith.
"What does he mean by it? That's what I want to know. And that's what
these gentlemen want to know. See here - "
"I am addressing - " said Smith.
"Asher's my name. B. Henderson Asher. I write 'Moments of Mirth.'"
A look almost of excitement came into Smith's face, such a look as a
visitor to a foreign land might wear when confronted with some great
national monument. He stood up and shook Mr. Asher reverently by the
hand.
"Gentlemen," he said, reseating himself, "this is a painful case. The
circumstances, as you will admit when you have heard all, are peculiar.
You have asked me where Mr. Renshaw is. I don't know."
"You don't know!" exclaimed Mr. Asher.
"Nobody knows. With luck you may find a black cat in a coal cellar on a
moonless night, but not Mr. Renshaw. Shortly after I joined this
journal, he started out on a vacation, by his doctor's orders, and left
no address. No letters were to be forwarded. He was to enjoy complete
rest. Who can say where he is now? Possibly racing down some rugged
slope in the Rockies with two grizzlies and a wildcat in earnest
pursuit. Possibly in the midst of Florida Everglades, making a noise
like a piece of meat in order to snare alligators. Who can tell?"
Silent consternation prevailed among his audience.
"Then, do you mean to say," demanded Mr. Asher, "that this fellow
Maloney's the boss here, and that what he says goes?"
Smith bowed.
"Exactly. A man of intensely masterful character, he will brook no
opposition. I am powerless to sway him. Suggestions from myself as to
the conduct of the paper would infuriate him. He believes that radical
changes are necessary in the policy of _Peaceful Moments_, and he
will carry them through if it snows. Doubtless he would gladly consider
your work if it fitted in with his ideas. A rapid-fire impression of a
glove fight, a spine-shaking word picture of a railway smash, or
something on those lines, would be welcomed. But - "
"I have never heard of such a thing," said Mr. Waterman indignantly.
"In this life," said Smith, shaking his head, "we must be prepared for
every emergency. We must distinguish between the unusual and the
impossible. It is unusual for the acting editor of a weekly paper to
revolutionize its existing policy, and you have rashly ordered your
life on the assumption that it is impossible. You are unprepared. The
thing comes on you as a surprise. The cry goes round New York,
'Comrades Asher, Waterman, Philpotts, and others have been taken
unawares. They cannot cope with the situation.'"
"But what is to be done?" cried Mr. Asher.
"Nothing, I fear, except to wait. It may be that when Mr. Renshaw,
having dodged the bears and eluded the wildcat, returns to his post, he
will decide not to continue the paper on the lines at present mapped
out. He should be back in about ten weeks."
"Ten weeks!"
"Till then, the only thing to do is to wait. You may rely on me to keep
a watchful eye on your interests. When your thoughts tend to take a
gloomy turn say to yourselves, 'All is well. Smith is keeping a
watchful eye on our interests.'"
"All the same, I should like to see this P. Maloney," said Mr. Asher.
"I shouldn't," said Smith. "I speak in your best interests. P. Maloney
is a man of the fiercest passions. He cannot brook interference. If you
should argue with him, there is no knowing what might not happen. He
would be the first to regret any violent action, when once he had
cooled off, but - Of course, if you wish it I could arrange a meeting.
No? I think you are wise. And now, gentlemen, as I have a good deal of
work to get through -
"All very disturbing to the man of culture and refinement," said Smith,
as the door closed behind the last of the malcontents. "But I think
that we may now consider the line clear. I see no further obstacle in
our path. I fear I have made Comrade Maloney perhaps a shade unpopular
with our late contributors, but these things must be. We must clench
our teeth and face them manfully. He suffers in an excellent cause."
CHAPTER XVI
TWO VISITORS TO THE OFFICE
There was once an editor of a paper in the Far West who was sitting at
his desk, musing pleasantly on life, when a bullet crashed through the
window and imbedded itself in the wall at the back of his head. A happy
smile lighted up the editor's face. "Ah!" he said complacently, "I knew
that personal column of ours would make a hit!"
What the bullet was to the Far West editor, the visit of Mr. Martin
Parker to the offices of _Peaceful Moments_ was to Smith.
It occurred shortly after the publication of the second number of the
new series, and was directly due to Betty's first and only suggestion
for the welfare of the paper.
If the first number of the series had not staggered humanity, it had at
least caused a certain amount of comment. The warm weather had begun,
and there was nothing much going on in New York. The papers were
consequently free to take notice of the change in the policy of
_Peaceful Moments_. Through the agency of Smith's newspaper
friends, it received some very satisfactory free advertisement, and the
sudden increase in the sales enabled Smith to bear up with fortitude
against the numerous letters of complaint from old subscribers who did
not know what was good for them. Visions of a large new public which
should replace these Brooklyn and Flatbush ingrates filled his mind.
The sporting section of the paper pleased him most. The personality of
Kid Brady bulked large in it. A photograph of the ambitious pugilist,
looking moody and important in an attitude of self-defense, filled half
a page, and under the photograph was the legend, "Jimmy Garvin must
meet this boy." Jimmy was the present holder of the light-weight title.
He had won it a year before, and since then had confined himself to
smoking cigars as long as walking sticks and appearing nightly in a
vaudeville sketch entitled, "A Fight for Honor." His reminiscences were
being published in a Sunday paper. It was this that gave Smith the idea
of publishing Kid Brady's autobiography in _Peaceful Moments_, an
idea which won the Kid's whole-hearted gratitude. Like most pugilists
he had a passion for bursting into print. Print is the fighter's
accolade. It signifies that he has arrived. He was grateful to Smith,
too, for not editing his contributions. Jimmy Garvin groaned under the
supervision of a member of the staff of his Sunday paper, who deleted
his best passages and altered the rest into Addisonian English. The
readers of _Peaceful Moments_ got their Brady raw.
"Comrade Brady," said Smith meditatively to Betty one morning, "has a
singularly pure and pleasing style. It is bound to appeal powerfully to
the many-headed. Listen to this. Our hero is fighting one Benson in the
latter's home town, San Francisco, and the audience is rooting hard for
the native son. Here is Comrade Brady on the subject: 'I looked around
that house, and I seen I hadn't a friend in it. And then the gong goes,
and I says to myself how I has one friend, my old mother down in
Illinois, and I goes in and mixes it, and then I seen Benson losing his
goat, so I gives him a half-scissor hook, and in the next round I picks
up a sleep-producer from the floor and hands it to him, and he takes
the count.' That is what the public wants. Crisp, lucid, and to the
point. If that does not get him a fight with some eminent person,
nothing will."
He leaned back in his chair.
"What we really need now," he said thoughtfully, "is a good, honest,
muck-raking series. That's the thing to put a paper on the map. The
worst of it is that everything seems to have been done. Have you by any
chance a second 'Frenzied Finance' at the back of your mind? Or proofs
that nut sundaes are composed principally of ptomaine and outlying
portions of the American workingman? It would be the making of us."
Now it happened that in the course of her rambles through the city
Betty had lost herself one morning in the slums. The experience had
impressed itself on her mind with an extraordinary vividness. Her lot
had always been cast in pleasant places, and she had never before been
brought into close touch with this side of life. The sight of actual
raw misery had come home to her with an added force from that
circumstance. Wandering on, she had reached a street which eclipsed in
cheerlessness even its squalid neighbors. All the smells and noises of
the East Side seemed to be penned up here in a sort of canyon. The
masses of dirty clothes hanging from the fire-escapes increased the
atmosphere of depression. Groups of ragged children covered the
roadway.
It was these that had stamped the scene so indelibly on her memory. She
loved children, and these seemed so draggled and uncared-for.
Smith's words gave her an idea.
"Do you know Broster Street, Mr. Smith?" she asked.
"Down on the East Side? Yes, I went there once to get a story, one
red-hot night in August, when I was on the _News_. The Ice Company
had been putting up their prices, and trouble was expected down there.
I was sent to cover it."
He did not add that he had spent a week's salary that night, buying ice
and distributing it among the denizens of Broster Street.
"It's an awful place," said Betty, her eyes filling with tears. "Those
poor children!"
Smith nodded.