Chapter V: “shadowing” the Chief of Police

The gale threatened every moment to blow Dick and his companion from the old pier; and while the lights of the tug became smaller and smaller they felt their way carefully toward the shore.

“Let me go first,” Dick said, “as I am so much lighter. We might find a rotten plank anywhere, or no plank at all. If there should be a wide gap, I hardly know what we’d do, for we never could walk one of the timbers in this wind.”

Fortunately there were no wide gaps and no planks too rotten to bear their weight; and after traversing more than a hundred feet of pier, putting a foot down carefully with every step before trusting much weight upon it, they felt themselves upon the sand of New Jersey.

“I suppose the telegraph office must be the first thing for us to find, if this is really Port Monmouth,” Dick suggested. “I should like to let the office know that I am here.”

“So should I,” Mr. Hills responded; “and here is a good omen for us.”

The good omen was the first ray of light they had seen since leaving the tug. Through an opening in the black clouds the moon was making a sickly effort to shine. The light was very dim, but far better than the intense darkness.

“There is a big house!” Dick exclaimed; “up this road, or street, or whatever it is. We can rouse them up and find out where we are.”

They followed the sandy road up to the house, which looked like a country tenement house, for it was large and neglected, and one of the folding front doors stood open. They stepped up to the big piazza and knocked, and in an instant there was a scraping and barking in the hall as if a dozen dogs were after them. Dick and Hills were both brave enough, but the pace they made down the walk and through the front gate would have done them credit in a footrace.

“I see something moving up the road,” Hills exclaimed a moment later. “Just this side of that clump of bushes. But I’m afraid it’s only a white cow.”

“No, it’s not,” Dick shouted, looking in the direction indicated. “It’s a white horse, and there’s a buggy behind it, and of course there’s somebody in the buggy. But it’s turning off into another road. Hurry up, Hills; we’ll intercept it.”

By cutting across a large open field they came out in another road ahead of the buggy, and in a moment they were within speaking distance of its occupant.

“Is this Port Monmouth, mister?” Dick asked.

There was no reply for a moment, and Dick repeated the question.

“Hello, Sumner! what are you doing here?” came a voice from the buggy. “Of course this is Port Monmouth; and a beautiful little place it is, for a blind man. Don’t you know my voice? I’m Atwater of the Herald. I just drove up from Long Branch. How did you get here?”

“Hills of the World and I have just landed from a tug and been chased by dogs,” Dick laughed. “We’re looking for the telegraph office and the operator.”

“Don’t worry about that, my child,” Atwater said. “I have the operator here in the buggy with me; picked him up as I passed his house. Follow us, and we’ll be at the telegraph office in a minute or two.”

Dick and Hills followed the buggy, and soon the telegraph office was reached and opened. Each man reported himself to his office by wire in the same brief style:--

PORT MONMOUTH, N. J.
The Daily Transport, New York:
Arrived 11.30. SUMNER.

“The operator tells me he knows nothing about the chief of police being here,” Atwater said, after the dispatches had been sent.

“Nice situation, isn’t it?” Hills exclaimed--“to hunt the chief in a charming Jersey town without a light, where everybody is asleep.”

“It won’t do to take any chances,” Dick said. “How many houses are there in the town, Atwater?”

“About forty or fifty,” Atwater replied; “little bit of a place.”

“Then it seems to me the only way is to visit every house and make inquiries,” Dick suggested. “We can divide the town into sections, and that will give us each about fifteen houses to go to.”

This heroic measure was agreed upon and the routes were laid out and the three reporters began the process of arousing every family in Port Monmouth. An hour later each one had rare stories to tell of encounters with dogs and threats of arrest and wordy combats with sleepy and irate householders. But there was no sign of the chief of police. The search had been so thorough that it was certain he was not in Port Monmouth.

“It’s a false alarm,” Hills said in a disgusted tone. “Fine work this, hunting a chief of police in a New Jersey forest.”

“And there’s an oyster supper a-cooking for me at home,” Dick added; “and here I am, hungry as a bear.”

“Well, we can only send in ‘good-night’ and go to bed,” Atwater said sadly. “I thought we were going to have a fine story. There’s a little hotel here, and we can all go home in the morning.”

Dick’s second dispatch was very brief. It merely said, like the dispatches of Hills and Atwater: “Chief not been seen here. Good-night. Sumner.” The “good-night” was not a message of politeness, but a signal well understood in the office that Sumner had nothing more to send.

“I’d like to know, Atwater,” Dick said when they were settling themselves in a big double-bedded room in the hotel, “how you heard of this thing in Long Branch.”

“Would you, sonny?” Atwater answered. He was very young himself, not more than two or three years older than Dick, and they had met several times before and had become well acquainted. “Then I’ll tell you. You must know that before I became a distinguished journalist I was an ornament to the telegraphic profession; in other words, I was a country operator. Last evening I had some business in Long Branch, and while waiting in the station for the train to take me home, I heard the sounder say something about the chief of police. That made me prick up my ears and listen to the message going through. It wasn’t intended for me, but it may have gone to a worse man. It said that the chief had come to Port Monmouth looking for Sterling’s body; and the minute I heard that, I chartered a horse and buggy and drove up here. That unravels the mystery, doesn’t it?”

It did, and at the same time it gave Dick an idea. “To understand telegraph operating,” he thought, “must be a great advantage to a reporter. This case is an example of it. I must learn enough of it, at any rate, to send and receive a message.”

“Say, you fellows, dry up, will you?” Hill grunted from his bed. “I want to go to sleep.”

To return to the office with nothing, after his midnight voyage in the tug, was what Dick confidently expected. But he was not done with the great Sterling’s body case yet.

Shortly after eight o’clock in the morning the three were awakened by a racket downstairs. They heard rapid footsteps on the stairs, and a moment later their door burst open and Lawrence bounded into the room--Lawrence, the Transport man, who had been sent to cross from Staten Island in a sailboat. He had reached Port Monmouth after daylight.

“We’re going to have something to do yet, fellows,” he announced, after greeting the three in bed. “The chief is certainly somewhere in the State, though he’s not in Port Monmouth. I’ve just come from the telegraph office, and the operator tells me he is in New Jersey. He is trying to locate him for us.”

About two hours later Lawrence entered again with further news. “I’ve found him,” he said. “The chief went down to Shamong last night, and he’s still there.”

“Shamong? Where is Shamong?”

“Away down among the scrub pines. It’s down below Manchester and Whiting’s, about a hundred and fifty miles from here.”

Dick bounded out of bed; he saw that there was probably more work before him.

“Say, Sumner,” Hills said, his eyes half-open, “get my instructions for me, will you, like a good fellow?”

“Yes, and mine too,” Atwater echoed; “there’s no use of our all getting up at this unearthly hour.”

It was a matter of pride to Dick that these older reporters should feel sure that he knew just what to do. He and Lawrence went down to the telegraph office, and Dick wrote three messages. One of them said:--

Daily Transport, New York:--
Chief of police is at Shamong. Send instructions.
SUMNER--LAWRENCE.

The others were the same, but addressed one to the Herald and one to the World, with Atwater’s name signed to the first and the name of Hills to the other.

Several hours passed before replies were received to these messages, and when they came Hills, Atwater, and Lawrence were ordered home and Dick was instructed to “go on to Shamong and find the chief.”

That meant that Dick was to travel alone into the wilds of South Jersey in search of the chief and Mr. Sterling’s body. He was sorry to go alone, it was so much more pleasant to travel in good company; but as far as the work was concerned he felt equal to it. Possibly, just possibly, the chief might have found the body or caught the thieves; and that would be a tremendous piece of news.

There was one difficulty about reaching Shamong, as he found by the time-table. The only train of the afternoon went as far as Whiting’s, fifteen miles north of Shamong, and stopped there. The only chance was to go to Whiting’s and hire a carriage there to take him on to Shamong.

Daylight was fast changing into dusk when Dick’s train drew up at Whiting’s. His first step was to go into the telegraph office. “When out of town, always keep your wires open,” Dr. Goode once had told him; and he had often found the advice valuable.

“Please ask Shamong to keep open late for a Transport special,” he said to the operator.

“All right,” the operator answered. “I think you’ll have company down there too.”

“What do you mean?” Dick asked.

“Well, I can’t tell all I know,” the operator replied; “but I think you’ll not be the only reporter in Shamong to-night.”

“Oh, it’s like enough,” Dick laughed. “We generally travel in flocks. I wish you would tell me where I can find somebody to drive me down there.”

“Do you see that big white house with the green blinds?” and the operator pointed down the street. “That’s Dr. Townsend’s house. The doctor’s son has a horse and buggy for hire, and I guess he’ll drive you down.”

But the doctor’s son, when Dick found him, seemed anything but anxious to drive to Shamong that night. The roads were bad, he said, and the night would be dark and his horse was lame and the buggy needed mending, and there were a dozen other excuses. The more Dick urged, the more excuses were made.

“I’ll drive you down there for five dollars,” the young man said at last; and it was evident from his tone that he considered that so high a price that it would put an end to the matter.

“Hitch him right up!” Dick answered. “I’m in a hurry to get there.”

The young man went out and returned in a few minutes to say that the horse was ready. He went to a little stand in the room, opened the drawer and took out a very small revolver and made a great show of loading it.

“I never travel at night without being armed,” he said, evidently to convince Dick that it would be useless to try to murder and rob him on the road.

“It’s a good plan,” Dick coolly replied; “neither do I.”

That drive from Whiting’s to Shamong was an experience that Dick long remembered. The road was a mere track through the pine woods, with trees growing so close to the ruts that there was barely room for the passage of the buggy. The young man drove so fast that Dick expected every moment that one of the hubs would strike a tree and he be sent sprawling over the horse’s back. He reached Shamong safely, however, and went directly into the station and telegraph office, the only building in the little hamlet that showed any sign of life, except the hotel across the way. The livery bill was paid and the doctor’s son headed his horse for Whiting’s without waiting for further developments.

“You’re looking for the chief, are you?” was the operator’s greeting to Dick as the latter stepped into the stuffy little office in which a dozen young countrymen with pipes and cigars in their mouths were gathered. “Well, you’ll have to go on five miles farther to find him, for he’s out at Mr. Waite’s place.”

“Five miles farther!” Dick exclaimed. “And who is Mr. Waite, and what is the chief doing at his place?”

“He’s an old friend of the chief,” the operator answered, “and the chief comes out here to shoot birds with him every year. That’s what he is doing here now, and you fellows are all on a wild-goose chase. I’ve had telegrams from about a dozen reporters to keep open for late specials, but you won’t have any specials to send. He’s not looking for anybody’s body out here, he’s shooting birds. There’s one of his guides sitting on the table; the man in the big hat. You can ask him.”

Dick immediately began to question the guide, and it did not take him long to find that the operator was telling the truth. There was no news to be had, for the chief was only taking a little holiday instead of hunting grave-robbers. He crossed over to the hotel and talked with the landlord, and there the bird-shooting story was confirmed. It was a tame ending to a long hunt, but there was no help for it. Dick returned to the Telegraph office and he was hardly inside when one of the loungers exclaimed:--

“There’s a locomotive coming up the road!”

Sure enough, there was the headlight staring them in the face. The occupants of the office ran out to the platform just in time to see the engine stop.

The young man who sprang from the engine before it came to a full stop was the Philadelphia correspondent of The New York Herald. He had heard by telegraph of the chief’s visit to Shamong, and as there was no train he had chartered the locomotive to carry him to the spot. While he stood talking to the operator, learning just what Dick had learned, three carriages drove up, and several reporters whom Dick knew ascended the station steps. There were five of them, four from the principal morning newspapers of New York, and one from The Philadelphia Age. These men had all been sent out in trains that carried them to Manchester, a little town on another railroad about ten miles away, and there they had taken carriages and started posthaste for Shamong, arriving all together.

It was amusing to Dick to see this congregation of reporters, numbering seven now, and no news for them to gather. He was in position to stand by and see the others work, for he had been over the ground thoroughly. But the businesslike way in which some of them went to work made him a little uneasy. They seemed to know just the people to inquire for; and perhaps their information might be better than his, after all. It was a place for him to keep his eyes and ears open, at any rate.

“Where can I find Mr. Peter Smith?” was one of the first questions asked by the Herald correspondent.

“I want to see Dave Hardy,” one of the others said to the operator; “where does he live?”

It was a relief to Dick when he found that Peter Smith was the hotel keeper with whom he had already talked, and that Dave Hardy was the guide. The men separated, each one working in his own way; but in a few minutes they were all back in the telegraph office; and all had found out just what Dick knew before, that the chief was only out on a pleasure excursion.

While there was news in prospect, these seven newspaper men had held aloof from one another; each was suspicious of the others, and each preferred to make his own inquiries without any confidence. But now that the work was over, with no chance of anybody “beating” the others, they were all the best of friends, and as jolly companions as a lot of schoolboys just let out for recess.

“It would be folly for us to drive five miles out to see the chief,” the Herald man said, “when we know that he is not here on business. Anyhow he couldn’t do anything without coming here to the station and telegraph office. There’s nothing for us to do but telegraph the facts in a few words and go to bed. I’ve sent my engine back; it’s too expensive a luxury to keep.”

“That’s all we can do,” echoed the World man, “as far as business goes. But I have an important duty to perform. My stomach has been on strike for the last three or four hours, and I’m going over to the hotel to order some supper. Any of you fellows want to eat?”

“Yes, yes, yes!” burst from six other throats. “We all want to eat. We’re starving, every one of us. Order suppers for seven, Mr. World, to be ready in half an hour. Don’t forget the raw oysters and broiled lobsters and about fourteen Welsh rarebits.”

“You’ll be lucky if you get ham and eggs,” said the Tribune man, who knew the ways of country hotels. “But they’ll have some bottled Bass. Let’s see; seven of us, are there? Have them put fourteen bottles of Bass on ice, World.”

“None for me,” Dick interrupted; “I don’t want any Bass.”

“Twelve bottles then;” and the World man disappeared to arrange for the suppers, while the others sat down on tables and boxes to write their brief dispatches.

The loungers about the telegraph office, all greatly interested in the scene, did not quite know what to make of these seven newspaper men. Half an hour before they had avoided one another, had little to say, and seemed to be at swords’ points; and now here they were chatting in the most friendly way, as if they were all old friends, and ordering suppers together.

While they were writing, the Age man touched Dick lightly upon the knee and inclined his head toward the door in a way that meant an invitation to come out. He was hardly older than Dick, the Age man; but he had much more to say, and was inclined to be boisterous in his manner. Dick followed him out to the platform.

“You’re from the Transport, ain’t you?” the Age reporter asked when they were alone outside.

“Yes,” Dick replied.

“Well, I’ll put you up to a good thing, if you’ll take my advice. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a sensation out of this business. Let the other fellows telegraph home that the chief is only shooting birds, but you and I can do better. We can get up a column apiece about the chief’s mysterious movements down here, and tell how he’s supposed to be shadowing the thieves and to be on the track of the body. I don’t want to do it alone; but if it’s in both the Age and the Transport, that will give it an appearance of truth, and we’ll have a beat on all the other fellows. Your people won’t like your coming home without sending any copy.”

It was the first time that Dick had ever had such a proposition made to him, and he was indignant.

“My people would rather have me come home a hundred times without copy than send them a story that was not true,” he answered. “I like a sensation, but I want it to be a real one; not one that I make myself. They trust me to tell the truth when they send me out, and I intend to do it.”

“Humbug!” the Age man sneered. “Do you think the Transport always tells the truth?”

“As far as I know it does,” Dick answered. “I know its reporters pretty well, and I don’t believe there is a man in the office who would knowingly send in a false report. I know that I wouldn’t for one.”

The Age man said something about Dick being “too good for a newspaper man” as they returned to the office and finished up their dispatches, but Dick did not care to reply. He was sure of his ground; and it was almost with satisfaction that he noticed afterwards that the other reporters avoided the Age man--not on account of the proposition he had made, for Dick said nothing about that, but because they were able to read him through and through almost instantly, and saw that he was a man to be avoided.

This is a faculty that comes quickly to a bright reporter, and it had come already to Dick to a degree that sometimes startled him. From talking with scores of new men every day--men who often had something to conceal or something to exaggerate or something to distort--he had learned to read a man’s heart and brain almost the instant he set eyes upon him.

“That Tribune man is a prophet,” somebody exclaimed at supper. “He said ham and eggs, and ham and eggs it is. But they’re wonderfully better than nothing.”

It was a surprise to Dick that nobody said a word to him about drinking ale while they were eating. All the others drank it and after supper smoked cigars, but Dick neither drank nor smoked. Instead of being urged, he was left to follow his own inclinations. And the best men in the party, he was glad to notice, treated him like a professional equal. Some of the men there were favorably known in every newspaper office in New York, and Dick had often heard of them. He was too modest even to think that it was because he had attended to his work faithfully and well, without bluster or boasting, that these men liked him; but that was the reason. They read him as easily as they read the Age man, but with different results.

Dick and the World man were quartered in the same room for the night, for the little hotel had not seven sleeping rooms to spare.

“I’m afraid it looked unsociable not to take a glass of ale or a cigar with the rest at supper,” Dick said before they went to sleep; “but I have made up my mind neither to drink nor smoke, and I couldn’t break my resolution.”

“Unsociable!” his companion repeated; “why, you were one of the jolliest fellows in the party! There’s nothing unsociable about not drinking ale when you don’t want it. The talk about drinking for sociability’s sake is very much in your eye, Sumner. When a man drinks it’s because he wants the stimulant, not because he wants to be sociable. That was why I drank the ale, and I’ll warrant it was the same with all the other fellows.”

“Well, it was very kind in you all not to urge me to drink or smoke when I didn’t want to,” Dick said.

“No; you’re mistaken!” the World man retorted, resting his head upon his hand, and his elbow on the pillow. “Excuse me; but I’m a much older man than you, Sumner, and I know these things better. Reporters are supposed to have some sense, and a sensible man never urges a fellow to drink who doesn’t want to. When a man tries to urge you against your will, it is safe to set that man down for a fool.

“Not only that,” he went on, “but it’s only a softshell who could be induced to drink when he didn’t want to. Such a man would hardly have brains enough to make a good reporter, and I hear you’re a pretty good one, Sumner. No, sir! I take my share of drinks, I’ll admit, but if I didn’t want one, I should like to see the man who could induce me to take it; and I should have a very poor opinion of any man who tried, too. However, it’s after midnight, and the early train goes at six;” and the World man, totally disregarding the hygienic principles that he often wrote paragraphs about, drew his head completely under the covers.

Dick thought that he had just fallen asleep for a moment, though in reality he had slept for several hours, when at half-past five the red-haired, freckle-faced boy of the hotel made a tremendous racket with his knuckles against the doors of the reporters’ rooms.

“Wake up, gents,” he shouted. “The chief of police is over at the station, waitin’ for the early train!”

In five minutes the reporters were all at the station with the chief, and he was joking them about their wild-goose chase.

“I’m glad I got the better of you once, boys,” he laughed; “but it was accidental. It would take a smarter man than I am to fool you fellows on purpose. I’m too smart to try it, anyhow.”

In the ride back to New York Dick became well acquainted with the chief of police, and the acquaintance often proved valuable to him afterwards. When he reached the office he gave the city editor a full account of his adventures.

“It often happens,” the editor said as he laughed with Dick over his odd experiences, “that the reporter’s adventures in gathering news would make a more interesting article than the news he goes after; but we seldom print the reporter’s side of it. However, I think we will make an exception in this case and let you write us a special about your experiences in hunting Sterling’s body. Make it about a column and a half. We pay extra, of course, for breezy specials.”