Chapter IV: A Wild Night on New York Bay

“Simply immense, Sumner!” was the city editor’s greeting when Dick went into the office on the morning after his Sing Sing experience. “‘Open the north switch!’ ha, ha! Nobody else has a line of that. How did you get hold of it?”

Dick might have answered that he got it by honest hard work and following up a very slight clew, but he merely said that he stumbled upon it. The pleasure of doing the piece of work in that day’s paper was all gone. His head still ached, and he was thoroughly ashamed of himself. Never before had so many of the good men of the office taken pains to speak to him; never in his life had he received half as many compliments. But he could think of nothing but his shame at the Scribble Club, of his gambling and drinking and losing his money.

The money loss was the smallest part of his disgrace, still it troubled him greatly. It was absolutely necessary for him to send money to his mother and to have enough to support him through the week, and he knew of no way to get it.

“There must be some way to raise a little money when a fellow is making a fair salary,” he reflected. “Randall will know. He knows how I happen to be without money, and he can tell me what to do.”

Randall’s advice to an older man would have been to take his watch to a pawn shop; but when Dick asked it was different. Dick had had little experience of life; he was a boy among men of the world and he had great ability; and all these things helped to make Randall take an interest in him. For there are many worse men in the world than Jack Randall. Generous to a fault, with no one but himself to support, he made money easily and spent it with equal facility, and spent it as readily on a friend as upon himself.

“Why, my boy, of course I can tell you what to do,” he said when Dick told him just how he was situated. “It was my fault for letting you play at all, and I ought have known better; but upon my word it was only thoughtlessness on my part. It was not that I wanted to teach you the lively ways of the Scribblers.”

“As far as the money goes,” he went on, “that’s easily remedied. I am hard up myself, as usual; but as soon as Dr. Goode comes in this evening I will borrow twenty-five dollars from him and turn it over to you, and you can pay it back whenever it’s convenient; no hurry about it at all.”

Dick’s assignments that day were much better ones than he had had before, and he tried to work hard enough to forget his troubles. It was almost a certainty that Dr. Goode would have something to say in the evening about the Sing Sing story, for the doctor seldom read an unusually good article in the Transport without saying a few encouraging words to the writer.

“And to think that if he speaks to me about it I shall have some of his own money in my pocket, borrowed to replace what I lost at gambling!” Dick reflected. “I half-wish I were back in the Record office, washing rollers for three dollars a week.”

Dr. Goode took his time about commending Dick’s work that evening. He waited for an opportunity to have him as nearly alone as possible, and then spoke, Dick thought, more kindly than he had ever heard him speak before.

“I like the construction of your Sing Sing story, Sumner,” the doctor said, taking off both pairs of glasses and wiping them with his handkerchief and then replacing them. “A good article must be built up, you know, like a ship; one part here, another there, and every part in the right place. I see that you understand that. You write good English, too, and that shows that your reading has been good, for no man can write good English who does not read good English.

“Of course you understand,” the doctor went on, “that doing such a piece of work as you did yesterday gives a man a certain standing in the office. He is considered one of the good men and steps up above the humdrum fellows who have no stuff in them. Naturally you will have a better class of work in the future, and in a short time your salary will be raised, for we do not ask good men to work for fifteen dollars a week. In time I expect you to be one of the best reporters in the city, if you take care of yourself.

“But only if you take care of yourself,” the doctor continued, laying his hand gently on Dick’s knee. “Many a man has started here with prospects as bright as yours, and has gone to pieces. Scribble clubs and rum and cards will soon darken the brightest prospects.”

Dick started and blushed furiously and his lips trembled.

“Yes, I know all about it, my boy. Randall did not want to tell me, but I wound it out of him because I like you. I like all young men who have brains. I understand what the temptations are; I have been through it myself. I don’t want to lecture you, but merely to put you in the way of seeing for yourself. Look about the office among all the men you know, and you will see that the really successful ones keep away from the little clubs and the cards and the drink. A dissipated man may flourish for a time if he is exceptionally brilliant, but he is sure to be left behind at last. See that for yourself, and with your brains you will need no other argument.”

Dick went home to Russellville that night for the first time in over a week, and his mother and sister gave him such a welcome as they considered due to a distinguished young writer and journalist, as they called him--half in jest and half in earnest.

“Say, sis,” he expostulated from the depths of the biggest rocking-chair, “do me a favor, will you? Never call me a journalist again. You don’t know how the real reporters and writers laugh at that word. They say that a journalist is a decayed penny-a-liner who comes ’round on payday and tries to borrow a quarter. The fellows who do the work and make the money are content to be called reporters.”

“Very well,” Florrie laughed; “then I’ll always call you a reporter.” She could not help noticing the change in Dick--a change for the better. He was so much more manly, so self-possessed, and he was dressed so much better.

“But I want you to tell me about Sing Sing,” she went on. “Did you really go into that big prison and see the warden? And did you see that splendid man who obeyed orders about the switch, though he thought it was going to kill ever so many people? How do you ever have courage to ask questions of everybody, Dick?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, that was a pretty hard pull at first,” Dick replied. “The first time I was sent to interview a man I walked up and down outside for half an hour before I raised courage to go in. But that feeling soon wears off; I don’t think of being diffident about it now. Indeed, I think I rather like it. I want to take you and mother into the city with me in two or three weeks to help me interview a man.”

“O Dick!” they both exclaimed, “how could we do that?”

“Easily,” Dick answered, smiling over his little mystery. “You see the man is a real estate agent; he has flats to let.”

“Do you mean it, Dick?” his mother asked. “Do you feel secure enough in the office to take such an important step?”

The subject of taking a small flat in the city and all living together was thoroughly discussed. Mrs. Sumner had a little income of her own, and by uniting this with Dick’s salary a cheap flat could be rented, not more than twenty dollars a month. “And it would be a positive saving to me,” Dick argued; “the restaurants are so expensive.

“We can even do a little better than that,” he went on. “I don’t know whether you have heard me speak of Darling, one of our copy readers. I didn’t discover his room till I’d been some time in the office, for it’s separate from our city room; but Darling is a fine fellow, three or four years older than I am, handsome, too, and very quiet. He has no relations in the city, and when I mentioned the other day that we thought of taking a flat, he said he’d like to rent a room from us, for he doesn’t like to be among strangers. He would pay about four dollars a week just for the room, and with that we could afford a thirty-dollar flat; and we can get a very fair one for that.”

“Thirty dollars a month!” Florrie exclaimed. “I should think we ought to get a fine house for that.”

Dick laughed merrily at his sister’s rural notions. He had learned something about city ways and prices.

“Perhaps I’ll not be out again till it’s time for you to come in and select the flat,” he said. “I’ll have longer articles to write now since the Sing Sing business, and long articles always keep a man late.”

The brightest reporters, however, cannot be assigned to important things when no important things are happening; and weeks passed before Dick had another chance to show his mettle. He was relieved of the tiresome work of attending petty meetings, and that was a gain; and he was sure that when a chance came for doing good work, he would have his share of it.

Darling, whose work was from six in the evening till the paper went to press at two in the morning, not only liked Dick’s writing, but liked Dick himself, and he did all he could to hasten the day when Mrs. Sumner and Florrie should come in to help select a flat.

“At two to-morrow afternoon, Darling,” Dick announced when the time came. “My mother and sister are to meet me at the south end of the postoffice at two o’clock, and you must be there and go with us, for you are interested in this thing, too. I hope we can find a flat where you can room with us. There ought to be no trouble when flats are so plenty.”

“There will be, though,” Darling answered; “there always is. When the flat suits, the price is too high; and when the price suits, the flat doesn’t. But I’ll meet you at any rate, and we’ll see what we can do.”

It was not till Dick saw the next day that Darling preferred to walk with his sister, that he noticed how very pretty Florrie looked. She was a little girl in his eyes, though nearly seventeen, and her abundance of wavy brown hair, her expressive eyes, her pink cheeks, and her graceful bearing had never attracted his notice before.

“We will take a Fourth Avenue car,” Dick said, after Darling had been introduced to his mother and sister. “There are a great many flats in Fourth Avenue and some parts of it don’t look expensive.”

It amused Dick to see how attentive Darling was to Florrie; helping her into the car and pointing out the sights of the lower city. Dick had never paid much attention to young ladies.

The car carried them up past Union Square, and a few blocks beyond that Dick saw a sign at the door of a large apartment house--“Apartment to Let. Inquire of the Janitor.” He knew it to be a very elegant and expensive place, for business had taken him there a few days before. But it occurred to him that it would be a good chance to let his mother and Florrie see one of the finest apartment houses in the city, and at the same time he would surprise them a little with the price, which was sure to be high. He signaled the conductor to stop and gave Darling a sly look, which was understood.

“We would like to look at the apartment you have to let,” Dick said to the attendant at the door; and in a moment they were all in an elevator resplendent with gilt and mirrors, rapidly traveling skyward.

“It is a small apartment,” the attendant said when they reached the place; “only a drawing-room, two bed chambers, and bath. But there is a beautiful view; this is the eleventh floor.”

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Mrs. Sumner shrank back from the window with an exclamation of alarm. “Oh, I never could live up here, Dick!” she said. “It makes me giddy just to look out. They’re such stuffy little rooms, too, though very handsome. I suppose they’d want a pretty good rent, small as it is. What is the rent, young man?”

“Thirty-five hundred a year, ma’am,” the attendant answered. “We will have a larger apartment vacant in about two months; that will be five thousand.”

Darling was afraid that the ladies would express the surprise he saw in their faces, so he hastily said:--

“We could hardly wait two months, and these rooms are too small; so we may as well look elsewhere. Shall we go down?”

“It was a shame not to tell you before we went in, mother,” Dick said when they were in the street again; “but I wanted to give you a little surprise. Those three small rooms are three thousand five hundred dollars a year, and we’ve got to have at least six rooms for thirty dollars a month. So you see what a task we have before us.”

It was a task indeed, but it was successfully accomplished. After visiting places little better than tenement houses, and other places far beyond their means, they found an apartment in Forty-ninth Street, near Lexington Avenue, that was satisfactory in both size and price.

“No, you’re not going to fool me again, Dick,” Mrs. Sumner said when she first saw the marble columns in front, the carved doors, and the mosaic pavement. “I’m not going into any more of your three thousand five hundred dollar places.”

“No danger of that here, Mrs. Sumner,” Darling said with a smile. “The show is all on the outside here to catch the eye. We shall find it plain enough within.”

It was plain, but clean and comfortable. “Just made for us,” Dick whispered to his mother. Up two flights of carpeted stairs, the apartment consisted of three cheerful bedrooms, parlor, dining-room, kitchen, and bathroom, all opening into a private hall; and the rent was thirty dollars a month.

“If that hall bedroom will suit Mr. Darling,” Mrs. Sumner said, “I think we can get along very nicely here--though I must say I like to have a backyard.”

“It is exactly the room I want,” Darling declared; and the flat was rented and arrangements made for moving in immediately.

“I think we’re going to be just as snug as can be here,” Dick said to Darling several days later, when the moving was completed, but the rooms not entirely put in order yet. “What do you say to a little housewarming to-night, to give us a good start in the new home? Just among ourselves, you know. I think an oyster supper would be the thing, and I’m sure the folks would gladly sit up and help us eat it after we’re through work.”

“That’s a good idea,” Darling answered. “You go ahead and make the arrangements and I will pay half the bills.”

“It will be just fun to do the cooking,” said Florrie. “I’ll manage to cook whatever you get, and sit up to help eat it. It’s the cutest little kitchen, with everything so handy that cooking is no trouble at all.”

“Oysters always go well,” Dick went on; “though anything ought to taste good in such a cozy little dining-room. We’ll need about two quarts; and I’ll get some celery and crackers and a little Roquefort cheese to wind up with. Some other night we’ll have a rarebit; sis is famous for making rarebits.”

Preparations for the night’s banquet were begun, but fate had decreed that Dick was not to help eat it. In his enthusiasm he had forgotten for the moment that a reporter is never master of his own time, but may be sent to the most unexpected places at the most unexpected times.

Dick’s day work kept him busy till eight o’clock in the evening, and as he had a small article to write after reaching the office, he had reason to believe that he would have nothing more to do that night. But he had hardly taken his seat when the night city editor called to him:--

“Sumner, can a man get over from Staten Island to the New Jersey shore in a sailboat to-night?”

It was not unusual for Dick to be asked such questions, because he made a specialty of studying up all the routes of travel in and about the city. He was a perfect walking guide-book, and almost every day he found the knowledge useful.

“He might, sir,” Dick replied, “but a sailboat is always very uncertain.”

“I have sent Lawrence to the lower end of Staten Island,” the editor went on, “with orders to get a sailboat and go over to Port Monmouth as fast as possible. Do you think he can get there before midnight?”

“It’s very doubtful, sir,” Dick answered. “Of course it depends upon the wind, and I should not like to take any chances on it.”

“Can you get to Port Monmouth?” the editor asked. “Remember the last train went at six o’clock.”

“Oh, yes, I can get there if you don’t mind the expense,” Dick asserted. “It is merely a question of money.”

“You mean a tug?”

“Yes, sir,” said Dick; “I mean a tug.”

“Very well, then,” said the editor; “you can drop that insurance matter and take this case. You must get to Port Monmouth at all hazards. Of course you know all about the stealing of the body of Sterling, the great millionaire, from St. Mark’s Churchyard; and you know what desperate efforts the police are making to catch the thieves. The chief of police started for Port Monmouth on the six o’clock train, and he is supposed to have a clew to the thieves there. You must find the chief and learn whatever he learns. It is a matter of absolute must. You _must_ get there. Here is an order on the cashier for fifty dollars for expenses.”

“The World has proposed to us,” the editor continued, “to share the expense of a tug. Stop at the World office and say that we accept the proposition. They will send Mr. Hills with you to represent them. Now be off and don’t lose a minute.”

Dick lost about twenty seconds in telling Darling that he was off for New Jersey and could not help eat the supper, and in almost no time he was at the World office, where he was joined by Mr. Hills, a short, stout reporter with a head full of brains.

“The East River’s the place,” Mr. Hills panted. “Right down Fulton Street to South.”

Hiring a tug seems an easy matter with plenty of money at command and so many tugs in the harbor looking for work. But at nine o’clock at night one might almost as well try to hire a white elephant. Towing is day work; and at six o’clock the tugs steam to their berths along the East River, fires are banked for the night, and captains and crews go home, leaving only watchmen in charge.

The two reporters boarded a dozen tugs, but everywhere the answer was the same: “Impossible! Fires banked, crew gone home.”

“Can’t you send for the captain?” Dick asked in several places. The answer led him to believe that every tugboat captain in New York lived in Harlem, or Morrisania, or some other distant section.

“Get an ocean steamer to whistle for one,” one of the watchmen suggested. “That may bring one out.”

“Capital idea!” Dick exclaimed. “Here’s the Ward Liner Santiago just below, at foot of Wall Street. We’ll get her to whistle up a tug.”

But that proved another disappointment. “Couldn’t think of it,” said the second officer, who was in charge. “If the captain himself was aboard, he wouldn’t do it, because if he did he’d make the ship liable for the tug’s charges.”

Matters were growing desperate. It was half-past nine by this time, and the editor’s words kept ringing painfully in Dick’s ears: “It is a matter of absolute must. You _must_ get there.”

It was an inspiration that caused Dick to stop a nautical-looking man in South Street and ask him what saloon the tugboat men most frequented.

“Duffy’s,” replied the man without hesitation; “corner of Fulton Street. It’s full of ’em at this minute.”

In Duffy’s saloon the reporters found a crowd of tugboat men, and among them Captain Brett, of the tug Dart. Several of the captain’s men were there, too; and he was willing to negotiate.

“Do you hear the wind howl?” Captain Brett asked. “It’s an ugly night down the bay. But I’ll risk the boat if you’ll risk your lives. Ten dollars an hour it will cost you, gentlemen, from the time we leave the pier till we get back.”

The terms were satisfactory and the bargain was made, and in less than twenty minutes the Dart was steaming down the East River, Dick and Mr. Hills in the pilot house with Captain Brett.

“You must understand,” said the captain, his voice half-drowned by the furious wind that pounded against the windows, “that I only take you to Port Monmouth. I don’t agree to land you there. There used to be an old wharf there, but it may have blown down; and anyway I couldn’t find it this dark night. You must take your chances of getting ashore.”

“Very well,” Dick answered. “Stop at the Battery boat-stand as you go out, and we will attend to the landing.”

“What good will that do?” Hills asked.

“Why, we’ll hire a Whitehall boatman to go with us, boat and all,” Dick answered. “With his boat on board we can land wherever we like.”

“Good!” said Mr. Hills; “that’s as good an idea as if I’d thought of it myself.”

Five dollars proved sufficient to induce one of the boatmen of Whitehall to put his boat aboard the tug and go along himself, and a few minutes later the little tug was dancing madly on the rough surface of the upper bay.

“This is nothing to what you’ll catch down below,” was Captain Brett’s comforting assurance. Down past the lights of Quarantine the tug steamed, through the Narrows, and into the lower bay. The roughness was nothing compared to the inky blackness. The world surely never saw a darker night.

It was almost 11.30 when Captain Brett rang a bell and the engines stopped.

“Now, then, gentlemen,” said he, “as near as I can judge we’re off Port Monmouth. I can’t say to a certainty, but that’s my opinion. A man can’t see through such thick black as this, and you mustn’t expect it. If you like to take your chances, I think you’ll find Port Monmouth somewhere off to the south’ard here.”

Dick opened the pilot house door and stepped partially out, and Hills followed. The wind almost swept them from their feet; the total darkness, the fury of the gale, the tossing of the little boat were enough to appall them.

“I don’t half-like this,” Mr. Hills said as they hastily drew back and closed the door. “The captain may be mistaken after all, and not be anywhere near Port Monmouth. What do you think?”

“There is only one thing to think,” Dick answered decidedly. “We must get ashore. Let them lower the boat, captain.”

In five minutes more, after some risk in the heavy sea, they were both in the Whitehall boat, and its owner was rowing them in the direction in which the shore was supposed to lie. Another minute or two and the boatman called out:--

“There’s something ahead here, and we’re near the beach, for I smell it. Yes, we’ve made it; here’s the end of the old wharf. That was a good guess on such a night.”

Dick and his companion, with their landsmen’s eyes, could see nothing; but they could feel the worm-eaten timbers of the decaying old wharf. How long it might be and how far the end from shore they could not even guess. But they could tell by feeling that the structure towered far above their heads. There was no help for it but to climb the timbers, feeling their way slowly from one to another, to the platform far above. To make matters worse, Mr. Hills was much too fat for a climber, and Dick had almost to drag him up.

After climbing thus nearly twenty feet, with hands cut by barnacles and rusty spikes, both men stood safely upon the platform of the pier. Neither of them had ever been in Port Monmouth before, and perhaps that was not Port Monmouth after all. How many planks were missing from the shaky old pier? How far was it to shore? In what direction lay the town? They must find it all out by feeling.

“That is all we want,” Dick called down to the boatman. “The tug can take you back to the city. We are all right now.”

“Are we?” Hills panted. “I wish I thought so!”