Chapter III: Part 3

In the next ten minutes Jimmy, in a frenzy of feverish haste, called up the city desks of all the other morning papers and repeated practically the same message to each. Then he ordered three messenger boys to report to him in half an hour, stuck six sheets of carbon between seven long sheets of copy paper, inserted the numerous layers in his typewriter and began to pound out, with ever increasing speed, a narrative that was to either make or break him.

* * * * *

It was nearly midnight when an office boy dropped a long manila envelope marked “NEWS—RUSH” on the desk in front of Larry McCarthy, night city editor of the World. The early mail edition had gone to press ten minutes before and McCarthy had just come up for air for a brief interval before plunging into the final activities of the night. The tension had relaxed and he was joking with the managing editor who had stopped to give a few parting instructions on his way home.

McCarthy tore the envelope open almost unconsciously as he went on talking and unfolded the four long sheets of paper which it contained, sheets covered with closely written typewritten matter. His gaze drifted carelessly to the top page where it lingered as something seemed immediately to interest him. A cynical smile began to play over his features as he read. Presently it broadened into something more mellow and human. Then he burst into hearty laughter.

“Shades of Tody Hamilton,” he chortled. “Here’s the last word in hysterical romance. This fellow makes ’em all look like pikers. He called me up on the phone to tell it was hot stuff. Well, it certainly is. It certainly is.”

“What is it?” questioned the managing editor.

“It’s a pipe dream by a bright young gentleman who seems to be trying to make a living by getting pieces in the paper for Jollyland. He must come from some place in the tall, tall grass if he labors under the delusion that he can put anything as raw as this over on a New York paper. I’ll give him credit, though. It’s a masterpiece of its kind. If someone ever starts a press agent’s school this could be used verbatim as a horrible example of the kind of a contribution _not_ to send out.

Just listen to this heading:

BLOODY UPRISING BY
SOUTH SEA ISLANDERS
AT JOLLYLAND QUELLED
––––
BELIEVED TO BE RESULT
OF BOLSHEVIK PLOT
––––
Maddened Savages Armed With
Spears and War Clubs Run
Amuck and Attempt to Take
Possession of Park.
––––
WHISKERED RUSSIAN SEEN
ACTING SUSPICIOUSLY
––––

“Isn’t that immense?” went on McCarthy. “Can you tie the colossal nerve of that fellow sending a thing like that out? Get his opening paragraph:

“‘Maddened with a thirst for human blood and believed to be acting under instructions from a Bolshevik agitator who was seen prowling about in the early evening 186 naked savages from the South Sea Islands made a desperate attempt last night to massacre all the whites in Jollyland, the gigantic summer park on Coney Island. Giving utterance to blood-curdling cries of vengeance and undaunted by the driving rain which was falling at the time they made an attempt to break out of the village, where they give daily exhibitions of their quaint and curious native customs, and were held in check by the park attendants only after a wild and furious struggle lasting for nearly half an hour!...’”

The managing editor laughed uproariously.

“The poor old Bolsheviki,” he chuckled. “Even the press agents are using ’em. That story’s certainly a gem of purest ray serene. I’d like to meet that young fellow. He’d make an interesting study.”

The telephone bell on McCarthy’s desk rang just then and the city editor reached for the receiver.

“Hello,” he shouted. “Yes—McCarthy—yes, I got one, too—it’s a bird—we’ve just had the best laugh of the month over it—most sublime imagination uncovered since Dante—you bet!”

“That’s Carlton of the Gazette—night desk man,” he said as he hung up. “He’s got a great sense of humor. Wanted to know if I’d had this and offered to send me his copy if I’d been forgotten.”

He crumpled Jimmy’s composition up in a ball and tossed it in the big waste-basket at his side as a boy slipped him a first copy of the mail edition wet from the press.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Eleven

The rain ceased falling at midnight. The moon emerged from behind a bank of sombre clouds and threw a silvery radiance over the weird and wonderful architecture of Jollyland. Dozens of the concessionaires and their employees who elected to live in the park throughout the summer and who had been penned in all day by the downpour came out for a breath of air and a stroll along the broad esplanade. Among them was Signor Antonio Amado, who sauntered out of his living quarters smoking a long cheroot and smiling a wicked smile. He was still inwardly chuckling at the success of his little plot and he had consumed a most particular bottle of a most particular wine in proper celebration of his achievement. The Signor’s attention was attracted by a conversation between two of the special night watchmen who were chatting in front of the tortuous roller coaster known as the Belvidere Bend. He slipped into a shadow to listen.

“Did he give you orders not to say a word?” one of the men was saying.

“He did that!” replied the other. “Shure it’s tryin’ hard they are to keep the thing out of the papers. They’re afraid it’ll put the place on the blink, and faith, I think they’re right. It’s mesel’ that won’t be breathin’ a word of it to a livin’ soul from now to the risin’ of the judgment dawn.”

The Signor tip-toed noiselessly around a corner and disappeared in the direction of his concession. Three minutes later he was talking to the World on his private telephone and trying to make a tired operator understand what he was saying.

“I havea de news,” he shouted, “de beega news—de damned beega news—de beega, besta news you ever hear—Who? Wella givea me data man McCart’—Hello, eesa dat McCart’?... Say, McCart’, deesa eesa Signor Antonio Amado who maka de lions jumpa—eh?—I say I maka de lions jumpa at Jollyland,—well, meester, deres one beega time down at Jollyland tonighta—one beega time—dey eesa try to keepa it outa de papers—but I tella you—deesa wilda men from de South Seas dey raisa hella—dey hava beega fight—dey—what you say? Seet on a tack?—I no seet on a tack—hello—hello.”

But only echo answered. McCarthy had hung up. The Signor swore a large, round, succulent oath and went to bed.

* * * * *

Jimmy was at his office at the customary hour the next morning. He hadn’t slept all night and he was dog-tired, but his soul was filled with satisfaction. His ruse had worked. Not a single paper had carried a line about the fracas. He had taxied over to Manhattan and had kept vigil along Park Row until the final editions appeared. Then he had chartered a touring car and had taken a long ride along the Long Island roads until it was time for him to report for duty. He found McClintock on the job already. The manager was in a jubilant mood.

“Well,” remarked the latter cordially, “you stood the test, all right. I’ve got to give you credit. I didn’t think you’d get away with it, to tell you the gospel truth. Pretty decent bunch after all, I guess. Did any of ’em put up much of an argument?”

“Any of who?” inquired Jimmy.

“Why the city editors, of course. You saw ’em all personally, didn’t you?”

Jimmy smiled a little guiltily, coughed nervously and then laughed quietly.

“I might as well confess, Mr. McClintock,” he said finally. “I didn’t see any of ’em. I tried out a new scheme and it worked like a little old Liberty motor. I figured that the story was altogether too good to keep out by any personal visit and I was afraid, anyway, that if any of the papers hadn’t been tipped off my going in with an argument would start ’em out hot-foot after the yarn. So I wrote it and sent it out myself.”

“You sent it out yourself!” gasped McClintock. “I don’t get you. Slip me a blueprint.”

“I took a big chance and I got away with it,” replied Jimmy. “I knew that there isn’t a chance any more of anything that a press agent writes gettin’ into the news columns of a New York paper. They’ve been shy on that kind of stuff for a great many years. So I said to myself that if I wrote out this yarn like as if I was some kind of a rank amateur, dressin’ it up with a lot of flossy adjectives and makin’ it read so that it sounded like a foolish pipe-dream they’d size it up as pure fake and throw it in the little old waste-basket. Then if any reporter or anyone else _did_ shoot in a tip on the story they’d figure out someone had been tryin’ to bunk _him_ too, and would pass it up. I made it good and strong, and it looks like they fell for it hook, line and sinker. And say, I know somethin’ I never knew before. If I ever lose out in this game I can get a job writin’ a series for the Boy’s Nickle Library.”

McClintock patted him affectionately on the back.

“All I’ve got to say, Jimmy,” he remarked enthusiastically, “is that you’re a great little press agent.”

“I’m a great little sup-press agent, you mean,” responded the other with a grin.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Twelve

One morning two weeks after the summer season at Jollyland had ended Jimmy found himself in a state of moody dejection in the club car of a fast express train en route from Washington to Baltimore. He dropped into a chair in the rear end of the car and let himself slowly slide forward until his shoulder blades nearly touched the seat. He swung one leg over the other, wedged both hands into his trousers pockets and puffed viciously at the somewhat frayed cigarette which hung from one corner of his mouth.

Somehow or other his brain wasn’t functioning properly. His imagination wasn’t yielding up the customary assortment of bizarre ideas and freak suggestions from which he always was able to select one particular inspiration to serve the need of the moment. To make the situation more exasperating the last words of Meyerfield kept bobbing up in his train of thought. He could see and hear the manager of the famous “Meyerfield Frolics” as he had stood in the lobby of the New National Theatre in Washington the night before, smoking the inevitable cigar and talking in a loud booming voice.

“Remember,” Meyerfield had announced with great impressiveness, “I want you to smear us all over the front page of every paper in Baltimore. We’ve never played the ‘Frolics’ there and we’ve got to have ’em properly introduced. I’m depending upon you to plant something that will stir that town up like an earthquake. Get the girls into it some way. They’re the best card we have.”

As Jimmy slouched in his seat the memory of a hundred spectacular exploits which he had engineered swam through his mind, but he couldn’t fasten on a new idea or on anything that hadn’t been worked and re-worked. He was just beginning his first season with Meyerfield and that worthy was a showman who expected results.

A memory picture of Lolita flashed into his mind and with it came the realizing sense that her silence was perhaps responsible for his present frame of mind. Since he said good-bye to her in New York a week before to go ahead of the “Frolics” there had been only two letters from her, letters written on the first two days of their separation. In the last she had mentioned, with great enthusiasm, that she had signed a contract to play a tiny part with a road company which was to regale the theatre-goers of the small towns in the Middle West with a chaste little farce then sensationally successful in New York. It was called “Ursula’s Undies,” and it was a dainty affair designed to provoke the curiosity of that type of male who carries around a pen-holder with a little glass-eye piece at one end. You look in at his suggestion (he’s sure to ask you) and you behold a couple of large and lumpy females in one-piece bathing suits in what is alleged to be a scene suggestive of Oriental abandon. “Ursula’s Undies” wasn’t even as wicked as that, but its advertising manager distinctly sought to convey the impression that it was too terrible for words and Jimmy had been moved to remonstrate with Lolita by means of a telegram in which he had rather peremptorily directed her to throw up her job and “get into something decent.”

There had been no reply to this wire nor to a frantic series of letters which had followed it and Jimmy had begun to fancy that morning that all was lost. He turned and looked out at the endless procession of fleeting telegraph poles and at the dreary landscape apparently afloat in a shimmering haze of mist which had followed a drizzling rain. He was aroused from his reveries by a pleasant voice, a voice with something a bit “precious” in its soft cadences, a voice that betokened a rather too thick overlay of what Jimmy scornfully called “culchaw.”

“Good morning, Mr. Martin,” said the voice. “What’s the matter? You seem sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”

Jimmy turned and recognized the speaker, a tall young man who wore enormous tortoise shell spectacles, an impeccable two button cutaway and a smile in which there was a touch of supercilious superiority. He was one of Jimmy’s pet aversions, a highbrow press agent—J. Herbert Denby by name—who was “doing a little special literary work,” as he himself described it, ahead of a company that was presenting a repertoire of dank and morbid Scandinavian plays on tour. He had been associate editor of a literary magazine and had written a number of choice essays on what he called the “new movement in the theatre” which had been published in more or less obscure periodicals and which had been undoubtedly unread by a vast multitude of persons. He was now enjoying his first experience in the business world of the theatre and he had met Jimmy a few nights before in Washington. His abysmal ignorance of practicalities had aroused a sympathetic feeling in the latter which had been later completely dissipated by his patronizing manner. His company was to be Jimmy’s “opposition” in Baltimore, and he was journeying there on the same errand that Jimmy was.

“Good morning,” grunted Jimmy. “What’s that you say?”

“I say that you seem sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,” responded Mr. Denby, sitting down in the next chair with great deliberation and carefully disposing of the tails of his coat. “By that I mean that you seem lost in abstraction, as it were.”

“Not as it were,” replied Jimmy. “As it is. I’m certainly lost in abstraction all right, all right, only I never called it that before. The old idea box ain’t workin’ right. It’s back firin’ on me.”

“What’s the problem?” asked Mr. Denby judicially. “Maybe I can be of some slight assistance. We represent opposite poles of the world of the theatre, but an interchange of thought may clear up the situation.”

“The problem is one that can’t be cleared up by a flossy little piece of writin’ marked ‘not duplicated in your city,’ old scout,” replied Jimmy disconsolately. “Essays ain’t any more use in this situation than curry combs in a garage.”

“But perhaps I may be able to venture a practical suggestion that might be of value,” persisted the other.

“Practical suggestion!” snorted Jimmy. “Not a chance. You fellows are all right, I guess, for this Ibsen stuff, but you don’t know anything about girl shows, not a single, little thing.”

“I presume you mean the chorus girls,” suggested Mr. Denby. “Do you wish to use them in some way for publicity purposes?”

“You’re talking,” said Jimmy. “I not only wish to I’ve got to. I’ve got to smear ’em over the front pages of all the papers in Baltimore to keep my job. And, believe me, Baltimore is some tight town when it comes to handin’ out space for the showshops. The lid’s on and you’ve got to murder someone to get it off.”

Mr. J. Herbert Denby cocked his head at a thoughtful angle and gazed judicially through his spectacles.

“It mightn’t be a bad idea,” he said finally, weighing every word carefully, “to get a delegation of prominent citizens to meet them at the station with automobiles. Had you thought of that?”

Jimmy turned a look of concentrated scorn on him that would have caused an ordinary mortal to shrivel up and pass quietly and unobtrusively into a state of complete dissolution, but it had no such effect on J. Herbert. He simply smiled a superior smile and awaited an answer.

“And it would be a good stunt, too,” snapped Jimmy, “to get the Governor of the State to dance the tango with Madeline La Verne in the waiting room of the station and to arrange to have the professors at the university carry all the girls on their backs up to the hotel. For the love of Mike, talk sense, man.”

“Of course, they would have to be extremely prominent citizens,” went on J. Herbert Denby, utterly ignoring Jimmy’s biting sarcasm, “the leading men of the city. It might be possible to arrange to have them go over to Washington in their cars and bring the young ladies to Baltimore in them instead of just meeting them at the station. That would add a touch of piquancy to the proceedings that——”

He got no farther, for Jimmy choked off further utterance by springing up and grabbing both his hands in wild exultation, almost upsetting the porter who was emptying a bottle of mineral water for the man in the next seat.

“You’ve got it, you old highbrow son-of-a-gun,” he shouted. “You don’t know how good it is yourself. You know that old stuff about ‘and a child shall lead them on.’ Well, that’s you. No offense, mind you, no offense, but you _are_ a child in this line. I’ve got a notion to kiss you right out in public.”

J. Herbert backed away and almost landed in the lap of a stout party who was reading a paper.

“Please don’t,” he murmured. “Please don’t, I pray. It would embarrass me fearfully.”

The stout party turned to his companion and spoke quietly under the cover of his hand.

“Nuts,” he confided. “Pure Brazilian.”

Jimmy bade J. Herbert Denby a most enthusiastic farewell at the station in Baltimore.

“There’s a dinner coming to you, old George B. Bookworm,” he shouted as he jumped into a taxicab, “a nice young dinner with a little grape on the sidelines and no stops for way-stations when we get our feet under the table. See you later, old dear.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Thirteen

Jimmy arrived at the Lyric Theatre in that glow of exultant feeling which every great artist should feel when driven to accomplishment by the urge of a great imaginative idea. He dashed through the lobby, pushed his way through a swinging door adjoining the ticket window marked “Manager’s Office” and leaned over a desk at which was seated a slender man with what might be called the old-young face, a face on which disillusionment and blase boredom seemed indelibly stamped. This was George Seymour, manager of the theatre, popularly known among traveling press agents as the “human icicle” because of his inborn and inherent distaste for humanity as a whole and for publicity men in particular. Mr. Seymour was going over a set of plans for the remodeling of the entrance of the theatre with an architect, and seemed supremely busy, but this little detail didn’t phase Jimmy.

“Well, Georgie, old man,” he said breezily, “here we are back again and this time we’ve brought the big idea along for a little visit. I want you to meet him.”

He slipped his hat down on the blueprint in front of Mr. Seymour, completely obliterating the graceful outlines of the architect’s new front elevation and swung himself up to a seat on the edge of the desk. A dangerous glint crept into Mr. Seymour’s eyes as he unconsciously fingered a heavy brass paperweight to the right of Jimmy’s hat.

“Perhaps,” he said in a voice whose quiet intensity was deadly in its menace, “perhaps you may not have noticed that I’m busy, Mr. Martin. I’m not interested in any big ideas just now except the one I’m discussing with this gentleman.”

“Forget that,” said Jimmy jauntily, pulling a cigar out of his pocket and lighting it while Mr. Seymour glowered at him. “That’s just an old blueprint for some improvement or other that can wait. My big idea can’t wait. I’ve got to put it over right now. And you’ve got to help me.”

Mr. Seymour’s architect, a precise man unused to such unceremonious business methods, laughed quietly.

“I guess, Seymour,” he said, “you’d better hear what he has to say. I’ve got a few minutes to spare. I’ll go into the next room. Persistence seems to be this gentleman’s middle name.”

Mr. Seymour, loathe to give in, looked around helplessly. Jimmy leaned over and deftly flecked a bit of cigar ashes from the lapel of the manager’s coat, a manoeuvre which sent his stock down ten points more.

“Stick around, old man,” he said pleasantly to the architect. “I don’t mind if you hear what I’ve got to say and I’m sure Georgie won’t either.”

“Don’t Georgie me, my friend,” replied Seymour, “state your business and get it over with. The only way I can get rid of you without calling for the police, I suppose, is to listen to you.”

“Well, it’s this way,” said Jimmie eagerly. “I’ve got to smear the Frolics girls all over the front page of one of your newspapers, and I’ve got an idea how to do it. Now don’t stop and pull that ‘it can’t be done’ gag on me. That’s the pet line of every house manager from Bangor, Maine, to San Diego. Every time you spring a new one they throw up their mitts and tell you that ‘it can’t be done.’ Clean the sand out of your running gear and go along with me on this one for once in your life.”

Mr. Seymour raised a protesting hand and tried to break in, but Jimmy rattled on.

“I’m going to pull a story,” he continued, “that a bunch of prominent members of the Washington Automobile Club are going to take all the girls for a joy ride next Sunday morning to a point midway between Washington and Baltimore and that another bunch of leading citizens—members of the automobile club of your own fair city are going to pick ’em up there in their cars and bring ’em into town. Ain’t it a great little idea?”

A sardonic smile brightened the face of the cynical Mr. Seymour.

“It’s certainly a great little idea, Mr. Martin,” he said, “and I have no doubt that all the city editors in town will be so grateful to you for letting them in on the story that they will have gold medals struck off commemorating the event.”

The underlying sarcasm of this speech did not check Jimmy’s enthusiasm.

“Of course, someone will have to stand for the story,” he said. “I’m not going up cold to any paper with a yarn like that and expect ’em to fall for it, without some confirmation. What I want you to do is to tip me off to some friend of yours, some nice, agreeable party who’s a member of the club and whose name carries a lot of class, a party who’s a good enough scout to help a fellow in a pinch. I’ll talk him into standing for the yarn, and slipping me a list of names. Can’t you suggest someone?”

Mr. Seymour’s eyes gleamed maliciously. He leaned over and grasped Jimmy’s arm in a pretense of great friendliness.

“I know just the man,” he said, “just the man.”

“Well, spill his name,” replied Jimmy. “I’ll get to him before lunch.”

“Donald McDonald’s the man,” said Mr. Seymour. “He’s the vice-president of the club and the president of the Merchant’s Trust Company. He’s a jovial, jolly, good fellow who’d be tickled to death to stand for a stunt like that. Just mention my name. There’s no doubt in the world, but what he’ll help us out. Is there, Larabee?”

Mr. Larabee, the architect, who was having a desperate time trying to smother a chuckle, assumed an expression of great wisdom and remarked:

“You couldn’t have suggested a better choice, Seymour.”

“His office is on the eleventh floor of the Merchants’ Trust building,” broke in Seymour. “Two blocks down and one block to the right.”

Jimmy jumped down from the desk, jabbed on his hat and started for the door.

“Thanks, fellows, for the tip,” he called back over his shoulder. “I’ll see you in a little while.”

As the door swung after him Seymour turned to Larabee and burst into a Mephistophelian laugh that would have been a credit to the late Lewis Morrison.

“Larabee,” he said. “They’ll pick him up in pieces down on Eleventh street just two minutes after he hits McDonald’s office. Can you imagine anyone going to that old boy with a fool proposition like that? Can you imagine it!”

“You certainly picked the last man in the world,” agreed Larabee. “Chorus girls and automobiles to meet ’em and a theatrical press agent. My God, Seymour, I really believe he won’t live long enough to even tell the doctor his name.”

* * * * *

It was mid-afternoon when Jimmy Martin returned to the Lyric Theatre. He breezed into George Seymour’s office with a grin on his face and an air of assurance that rather flabbergasted the manager.

“Well, Georgie,” he said, “you certainly gave me the right dope. I landed buttered side up. Fine fellow, McDonald. Great personality. Best little old scout I’ve met in years.”

“You _saw_ him?” gasped Seymour incredulously.

“Saw him?” echoed Jimmy. “I should say I did. I lunched with him over at the Bankers’ Club and I’ve been out for a ride on the boulevard with him in his car. Fixed me up all right and he’s going to stand for everything.”

“What brand of dope is that you use, Martin?” inquired the manager sarcastically. “I’d like to recommend it to some of my friends.”

“Come down off the flying rings, Georgie,” retorted Jimmy. “What are you up in the air about? Didn’t you sic me onto him and didn’t he run to form just as you said he would. How’s this for a reception committee?”

Jimmy reached in his coat pocket and drew out a folded piece of paper.

“Some class to that bird,” he said. “He had the little old stenographer write it out for me. Here’s the names: Jonathan Wilde, president of the Kewanee Packing Company; Judson Davis, secretary and general manager of the Twistwool Knitting Company; Horace Chadwick, president of the Oystermen’s First National Bank; Col. Hannibal Roundtree, president of the Carrolton Country Club; Jefferson Tait, retired gentleman; Henry Quinby Blugsden, Maximilian Hendricks, Marshall....”

“Stop,” shouted Seymour. “You mean to tell me that McDonald gave you that list of names and said he’d stand for it?”

“You can play that three ways, Georgie,” responded Jimmy, shoving the paper under the other’s nose. “There’s the list on his own personal stationery. This is the reception committee that’s going to motor out Sunday morning to bring our flossy frails into your beautiful city. At least my friend McDonald says they are and of course, I’ve got to take his word. So have the papers. I gather he’s some important person.”

“Of course he is,” replied the dazed manager. “Of course he is—one of the biggest citizens in town. And that list—why that list just reeks with distinction. I can’t understand it. That crowd meeting chorus girls? Why the idea is—well, it’s just impossible. That’s the only word!”

“Gosh, if that’s the way you feel about it the darned thing must be going to develop into a bear of a story. Speaking for myself, I never met up with old James K. Impossible. He doesn’t belong to any of my clubs and whenever I think I see him coming I duck up a side street.”

“If you get any paper to stand for that story,” said Seymour, “it’ll stir up the whole town.”

“That’s where I belong,” replied the press agent jauntily. “Stirring up towns is one of the best little things I do. Choose your exit door, Georgie. I’m going to plant this yarn tonight and the intense excitement will begin to develop in the morning.”

He swung briskly out of the office and Seymour sat down, tried to figure the thing out. Somehow he couldn’t.

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Chapter Fourteen

Nick Jennings, night city editor of the Baltimore Bulletin, stifled a yawn, stretched his arms, stood up and lounged over to the copy desk. He was utterly unlike the city editor of fiction. He was a short, stocky person with a round and jovial face and there wasn’t a trace of the fabulous steely glint in his grey eyes.

“Not a line of stuff worth sending up,” he observed to Tom North, the head copy-reader. “Unless something breaks the local end of the old sheet tomorrow is going to be about as interesting as a seed catalog. I’ve marked Milligan’s story on the food inspection scandal for a two column head, but it’s pretty dead stuff. Got an idea?”

Tom North shook his head.

“I thought for a minute there might be a feature in that North Side Woman’s Club resolution protesting against the psycho-analysis movement,” he said, “but I didn’t suggest it to you because that Arline Dupont Maxwell introduced it. That dame can cook up more schemes to get her name on the front page than any three prima donnas I know of. There isn’t anything else that’s worth wasting good ink on.”

The city editor yawned again and looked at the clock. It was after ten.

“It’s tough turkey,” he rejoined. “I’ll bet you there was more news stirring out in Twisted Twig, Oregon, today than in this burg.”

An office boy touched him on the arm and handed him a card. He looked at it, hesitated for a second or two and then remarked:

“I’ll take a look at that bird. Send him in.”

He turned to his co-worker again.

“Zip goes another resolution,” he said with a half-laugh. “I’m going to see a press agent. I’ll take any kind of a chance on a night like this. Persistent gink. Sent in his card an hour ago and I turned him down flat. Now he sends it in again marked ‘absolutely imperative I see you—great story with a local angle.’”

He had just settled himself again at his desk when Jimmy Martin swung through the city room and greeted him with an expansive smile.

“Well, Mr. Martin?” grunted Jennings interrogatively as he bent over a page of typewritten copy on his desk in simulation of great pre-occupation.

“Mr. Jennings,” began Jimmy eagerly, “I’ve got a great story with a local angle, a story that’ll stir this little old town up considerable and then some.”

“Uh, uh,” said the city editor, never looking up.

There wasn’t the slightest trace of interest in Jennings’ attitude and Jimmy felt his own enthusiasm flagging for just a moment. Cold-blooded fish, these city editors, he said to himself, always afraid someone is going to put one over on them.

“You see, Mr. Jennings,” he resumed, “I’m with Meyerfields’ Frolics. We play the Lyric next week and——

“I saw your card,” snapped Jennings. “What’s the finale?”

“Well, I just heard tonight that the Baltimore Automobile Club is going to pull off a little private stunt next Sunday—sort of under cover. Someone slipped me a hot tip. I made the chairman of the committee in charge cough up. A bunch of the prominent members are going to pick up the girls of our show in a flock of cars over at Annapolis Junction and bring ’em into town. It’s a cooperative stunt they’re pulling off with the Washington club. The fellows from the capital are going to bring ’em as far as the Junction and——”

“Nothing doing,” broke in the city editor.

“But it isn’t a fake,” persisted Jimmy eagerly, “it’s dead on the level. I’ve got the names of the reception committee with me. The chairman had his stenographer write them out for me.”

He shoved his typewritten list across the desk directly under Jennings’ hand. The latter looked up in annoyance, started to push it back, caught the name on the letterhead and gave the paper a cursory glance. He looked up again.

“Been looking through Seymour’s copy of the Blue Book, eh?” he remarked testily. “Where’d you dig up this letter head?”

“I’m telling you that Mr. McDonald had his stenographer write it out for me. I don’t ask you to believe me, Mr. Jennings. Mr. McDonald said you could call him up before eleven. I’m not trying to steer you wrong.”

The fierce intensity of Jimmy’s voice and manner caused the skeptical Jennings to bore him with a searching look. His eyes dropped to the paper again. He skimmed through the names. What if by some queer quirk the story was really true? Donald McDonald, Horace Chadwick, Col. Roundtree and all those others joy-riding with chorus girls under the official auspices of the Automobile Club—why, the thing would rock the town like an earthquake! And the fellow had said McDonald would verify the story. Why had he taken a chance and said that if it wasn’t true? It was an easy matter to reach McDonald. He looked up warily.

“Been spilling this story any place else?”, he asked.

“Not a syllable. It’s exclusive for you if you promise to use it. Of course, if you don’t I’ll have to drop in over at the Gazette office. It’s too good to waste.”

Jennings seemed to look through Jimmy for a full half minute while he pondered deeply.

“Young man,” he said finally. “I’m going to investigate this little yarn, but let me tell you that if it turns out to be a fake, I’ll have you deported as an undesirable alien.”

He turned his gaze towards the little group of reporters on the other side of the room grinding out copy to the tune played by a dozen clicking typewriters.

“Crandall,” he called out, “I’ve got a story for you to look up.”

Jimmy effaced himself as the Bulletin’s star feature writer jumped up briskly in response to his chief’s summons.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Fifteen

The Horace Chadwicks were breakfasting in their stately old colonial home in the environs of the city. The shrill song of twittering robins came through the half-open windows on a gentle spring breeze and the morning sunlight flooded the room. A benign spirit of peace and domestic tranquility seemed to brood over the scene. Mr. Chadwick, a solid and substantial looking man of fifty-five, was supping his coffee and glancing through the financial columns of the Gazette. Mrs. Chadwick had finished her grape-fruit and had just picked up the Bulletin. She was a matronly person whose ample bosom seemed to be but the continuation of a rippling series of superfluous chins. She carried herself, even in her morning negligee, with that air of conscious rectitude and commanding importance which she felt to be fitting for a prominent banker’s wife who was a member of three important women’s clubs, secretary of the anti-cigarette section of the local branch of the W. C. T. U., vice-president of the Baltimore chapter of the League Opposed to Woman’s Suffrage and chairman of the Advisory Committee to the State Board of Moving Picture Censors.

If Mr. Chadwick hadn’t been deeply immersed in the Gazette’s account of the proposed merger of certain copper interests he might have noticed gathering storm clouds a few feet away, but he was blissfully unconscious of any impending catastrophe. Screened by his paper he had no inkling of the passing train of emotions that were registered upon the extensive facial areas of the partner of his joys. Amazement, incredulity, bewilderment, chagrin, unholy rage—all of these feelings were depicted upon the countenance of Mrs. Chadwick and were succeeded in turn, by an expression of scornful calm that was pregnant with possibilities of a most unpleasant nature. She laid down the Bulletin, removed her glasses and addressed her husband in a voice that was cold and menacing.

“What car do you propose using Sunday, Horace?” she asked.

“What’s that?”, said Mr. Chadwick looking around his newspaper. “What car? Sunday? Oh, I guess I’ll take the new touring car out?”

“Don’t you think the limousine would be better?”, she continued in an even voice. “More sheltered, more screened from the public gaze as it were?”

“More screened from the public gaze?”, he repeated. “What are you getting at, Elizabeth? No limousine for me if this weather keeps up. Wonderful morning, my dear, a wonderful morning. I’ll bet the crocuses sprouted three inches over night. A few more days like this and I’ll peel a half dozen years off. Nothing like spring to put life into you, my dear, nothing like it.”

“Nothing like spring to make foolish nincompoops out of a lot of old men,” corrected Mrs. Chadwick in a voice that was positively glacial.

Something in the tone of it stirred her husband’s curiosity. He put down his paper and looked up quickly.

“What are you talking about, Elizabeth?” he inquired sharply.

“I suppose Colonel Roundtree has picked a blonde,” went on Mrs. Chadwick icily, utterly ignoring his question. “Have you decided on a brunette, Horace?”

“Blondes—brunettes?” murmured Mr. Chadwick hazily. “Have I decided—say, Elizabeth, what’s got into you?”

“I dare say brunettes are a little too seriously inclined for you,” ran on his wife in the same even, ironic tone. “Blondes are livelier and they have the funniest names, I’m told. Which do you prefer, Horace—Trixie, Mazie or Delphine?”

Mr. Chadwick surveyed his wife with alarm.

“What’s the joke, Elizabeth?”, he inquired with an attempt at a smile that was really pathetic. “Where do I laugh?”

“Into her little pink ear, Horace,” responded Mrs. Chadwick.

“Look here, Elizabeth,” he shouted, “either you need a doctor or the air around here needs clearing. Humor was never your strong forte. There are a lot of sly little innuendos floating about that I’m going to choke off right here and now. Some damned old meddler in petticoats has been buzzing about this house and I’m going to find out who it is.”

Mrs. Chadwick composedly confronted him.

“A pretty well known meddler, Horace,” she remarked with irritating suavity. “A meddler known to thousands. I refer you to the Bulletin.”

She carelessly indicated the paper in front of her. Mr. Chadwick grabbed it and hurriedly glanced at the front page. A three column headline attracted his attention.

ELDERLY MILLIONAIRES
PLAN JOY RIDE PARTY,
WITH “FROLICS” CHORUS
––––
Donald McDonald, Horace Chadwick
and Other Auto Club
Members Arrange to Bring
Broadway Beauties Into Town.
––––
INSIDER SPILLS THE BEANS
––––

By the time Mr. Chadwick got that far he was spluttering like a leaky radiator valve. By the time he had finished reading through the flossy little yarn that Billy Crandall had woven out of Jimmy Martin’s story, he looked as if he had overstayed the time limit in the hot room at a Turkish bath by fifteen minutes. His face was fiery red and the veins stood out on his forehead in knotty little lumps.

The fragmentary remarks that Mrs. Chadwick was able to extract from the almost incoherent jumble of sounds that escaped from the lips of her spouse during the reading were of such a general nature and tone that she put her hands to her ears in sheer self-defense and sat wildly tapping her feet on the floor to drown them out. The next minute her husband crashed out of the room and through the hall to his waiting car.

“Cut her loose, Martin, and drive me to the Bulletin office,” he shouted to the trim chauffeur. “I’m going over the top after that crowd of pestiferous puppies.”

* * * * *

Though it was not quite nine o’clock when Horace Chadwick arrived at the Bulletin office he found eight other apoplectic prominent citizens gathered in excited colloquy in the ante-room to the office of Richard Chilvers, the owner and editor-in-chief of the paper. Col. Hannibal Roundtree, a handsome and stately old gentleman with a militant imperial and a flowing white moustache, was addressing remarks to a thoroughly scared young man who had thoughtlessly confessed a minute before that he was Mr. Chilver’s secretary.

“You listen to me, young man,” he was saying. “You march into that office there and get Dick Chilvers on that private wire of his and tell him that if he’s a gentleman he’ll drop his breakfast and come down heah and meet a delegation of irate and fightin’ mad citizens of this community face to face, instead skulkin’ in the trenches.”

The youthful secretary vanished through a swinging door marked “Private” and Colonel Roundtree turned to his friends.

“Damned, rascally, cowardly hounds—that’s what I call ’em. They print a dastardly canard like that and then they skedaddle in the face of the common enemy.”

“You’re talking, colonel,” broke in Mr. Chadwick. “I haven’t met anybody I know, but I’ll bet we’re the laughing stock of the whole town.”

“I can’t take that bet,” responded Col. Roundtree bitterly. “Unfortunately for my peace of mind I have met some of my friends. Why, gentlemen, we should take matters into our own hands, mount a machine gun right heah at this door and keep ’em from gettin’ out another edition of this lyin’, treachous, no-account sheet.”

There were murmurs of approval of these belligerent sentiments from the little group of protestants which had just been increased by the arrival of Jonathan Wilde, a thin dyspeptic looking man with a disappearing Adam’s apple and of Henry Quinby Blugsden, a former United States senator who carried the dignity of America’s foremost debating society about with him on all occasions.

“Legal measures, my dear colonel,” said the former senator, “are, I think, the soundest in such an emergency. So far as I am concerned my suit will be filed this afternoon. I shall name the sum of $250,000 as insufficient damages for the mental pain I have already undergone. Mrs. Blugsden, as many of you know, is a woman of decided prejudices and a strong mind.”

“She hasn’t a shade on my wife,” remarked Mr. Wilde. “She’s got two doctors working on her this minute. Went right off into hysterics at the breakfast table and began smashing china.”

“My own deah Julia,” remarked the colonel, “professed not to believe the damned nonsense, but there was a look in her off eye as I was passin’ out the door that made me feel more uncomfortable than I have since the day Yellow Boy lost the Eastern Shore Handicap.”

The elevator door out in the corridor clanged just then and the brisk step of Richard Chilvers was heard approaching the little delegation of prominent citizens. Colonel Roundtree moved to a strategic position at the head of the group. The publisher—a tall, forthright, hearty looking man—stopped at the doorway and affected great surprise at the combination of wealth, social position and business power he found confronting him.

“Well, well,” he remarked buoyantly, “the Bulletin seems to be honored this morning. It can’t be possible that you’re all waiting to see me, is it?”

Colonel Roundtree lost his voice for a moment at the breezy assurance of this greeting. He coughed violently and then composed himself with a mighty effort.

“You know perfectly well why we’re here, Dick Chilvers,” he said majestically. “We’re here because the honor and the sacred dignity of our homes and hearths have been ruthlessly assailed in the public prints.”

The publisher walked toward the door leading to his office. He held it open.

“Just step inside, gentlemen,” he said quietly. “I never discuss business out here.”

The prominent citizens moved inside and disposed themselves about the desk in the centre of the room. Mr. Chilvers, who was irritatingly calm, laid his hat and gloves on the desk and faced them.

“Won’t you be seated, gentlemen?” he asked suavely.

“Seated! Hell!” retorted Colonel Roundtree. “We want to talk to you standin’ up. Why did you print that lyin’ yarn this mornin’?”

“I presume you refer to the story about the Automobile Club,” returned the publisher. “I’m not aware that it is a lying yarn, as you call it. I’ve been up several hours, colonel, and I’ve been doing a little investigating on my own.”

There were excited murmurs from the group of protestants at this remark. Horace Chadwick, who stood next to Colonel Roundtree decided to go to bat in place of the latter. The colonel was palpably too mad to be articulate.

“Dick Chilvers,” said Mr. Chadwick, “do you mean to tell your fellow club members and business associates that you give the slightest credence to this fairy tale?”

“I mean to tell you,” replied the publisher evenly, “that I have faith in the men I employ. I didn’t see the story until I read it in the paper this morning. I must confess it sounded incredible. I got my night city editor out of bed and he told me that the story had been thoroughly investigated and verified.”

“Verified?” shouted Colonel Roundtree, finding his voice again. “Who in the name of Andrew Jackson verified it?”

“A gentleman we all know extremely well,” returned the editor. “I’m going to call him up.”

He reached for the telephone book on his desk, looked up a number and gave it to the operator. His visitors gathered around his desk whispering excitedly to each other. There was a moment or two of tense silence and then the bell rang.

“Is that 3459 Parkway?” he asked. “Please give me Mr. McDonald.”

As he waited the distinguished citizens looked at each other in amazement. They moved closer to the telephone. Presently the publisher was talking again.

“Is that you, Mac?” he asked. “This is Dick Chilvers. You know what I want to talk to you about, I guess—yes, that’s it—hell?—I should say so—I’ve got nearly an even dozen irate citizens here now and I’m dead certain there are more on the way—Roundtree?—yes, he’s here—yes, he’s a little excited about it——”

An indignant snort from the colonel interrupted the conversation. His associates nudged him into silence.

“Jennings said you gave Crandall the story,” Chilvers was saying. “You did, eh?—what’s the idea? Come now, Mac, this is serious—don’t laugh like that—why if Roundtree ever heard that laugh he’d commit aggravated assault and battery on the spot—y-e-s—y-e-s—well, of course——”

The little group bent forward eagerly to catch every word. The one-sided conversation began to get more and more cryptic to them.

“You will, eh,” the publisher continued. “No—not this time. I’ll get this particular story myself—noon, eh?—all right, Mac.”

Chilvers hung up the phone and turned to his friends.

“Gentlemen,” he remarked easily. “I’m going out on a little assignment myself. I’m going to interview Mr. Donald McDonald of the Merchants Trust Company. He says he’s got another story that’s better than this one. I’ll have to ask you to excuse me until I see him.”

“We’ll meet you at his office,” blurted Colonel Roundtree. “There’s something powerful queer about this thing and we’re going to see it through.”

“Mac won’t be at his office,” responded the publisher. “He said he’d prefer not to meet any of you until tomorrow. We’ve arranged a—well, a sort of a secret rendezvous.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Sixteen

Horace Chadwick was stirring the next morning before anyone else in the house. He crept down the main stairway in a suit of pink pajamas and a purple bathrobe and made straight for the front door. He opened it and peered out on the porch. The morning papers had not yet arrived. He slipped back in the hallway and sat down on a settee. He had had a sleepless night and he was in a rotten humor. The wife of his bosom hadn’t spoken a word to him since the affair of the breakfast table the day before and he had been so unmercifully “guyed” by every friend he met that he had taken refuge in his library early in the afternoon and had smoked three times as many black cigars as were good for him.

Chilvers had been inaccessible since the visit of the deputation and every effort to get in touch with anyone on the Bulletin had been met with the response that “explanations will be made in tomorrow’s paper.” To make matters worse the Rev. Dr. Chaddow had called to offer spiritual consolation to “dear, kind Mrs. Chadwick.” He had heard the cleric intoning his sympathy in the drawing room and had been obliged to stand at an open window to cool off and keep himself from rushing in and laying violent hands on the reverend gentleman. The story was the talk of the town and telephonic reports from other members of the aggrieved group of prominent citizens brought word of the continuance of violent hostilities in nearly a score of households.

The memory of these things seethed in Mr. Chadwick’s mind as he sat with his aching head bent forward on his hands and heard the library clock chime six. Presently a dull thud was heard against the door. Mr. Chadwick jumped up and stepped out on the porch again. He picked up the tightly rolled little bundle of newspapers a boy had just thrown in from the sidewalk, and slammed the door shut behind him. He eagerly unrolled the package, picked out the Bulletin and held up the front page under the shade of a tall hall-lamp.

Della, the cook, who was coming down the front stairs in direct violation of a household rule at this particular moment, was frozen in her tracks by the incisive explicitness of a blistering exclamation which came up out of the hall below. It was followed by murmurs and mumbles which she couldn’t quite make out, then by a chuckle or two and finally by a hearty laugh that sent her scurrying upstairs again and down the back way, convinced that the gentleman of the house had suddenly gone out of his mind.

Mr. Chadwick followed her up with the nimbleness of a school boy, waving the paper in his hand. He knocked loudly at his wife’s door.

“Elizabeth,” he shouted, “God’s in his heaven—all’s right with the world.”

“What’s that?” came a sleepy voice from behind the locked door.

“The blonde peril has passed on out to sea,” he said gayly. “Take a look at this morning’s Bulletin.”

Mrs. Chadwick unlocked the door and admitted her husband. He blithely escorted her over to the window, drew up the curtain and flashed the paper in front of her blinking eyes. At first she saw only a smear of black type and a dancing set of little pictures. The type presently resolved itself into a five column headline which told a story that the whole town would be chuckling over in another hour:

BANKER SATISFIES
GRUDGE; NEARLY
BREAKS UP HOMES
––––
Fate and Theatrical Press Agent
Play Into Hands of Donald
McDonald and Give Him Sweet
Revenge After Many Years.
––––
HE WHO LAUGHS
LAST LAUGHS BEST

Mrs. Chadwick gazed bewilderingly at the flaming headline and at the pen and ink sketches illustrating the story which followed—sketches picturing with comic effect little scenes like that which transpired at her own breakfast table the morning before.

“I don’t understand,” she said weakly.

“Read the first few paragraphs and you will,” chuckled her husband.

His wife obediently read the introduction to the long story which Crandall had written.

On a certain Spring night a score of years ago a certain Baltimorean
gazed up at the star spangled heavens on the desolate shores of a
little inlet of Chesapeake Bay twenty long miles from a railroad and
fifteen from any human habitation and swore by all the nine gods
that sometime, somehow, some place he would get even collectively
and appropriately with two dozen of his fellow club members who had
just played him what he considered the scurviest trick known to
mortal man. He had been kidnapped on his wedding night and dumped
without ceremony on the loneliest spot in this corner of the
world—all by way of a joke.