The Project Gutenberg Etext of Moon-Face and Other Stories
by Jack London
#'s 19 to 26 in our series by Jack London
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Title: Moon-Face and Other Stories
Author: Jack London
Release Date: November, 1997 [Etext #1089]
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MOON-FACE AND OTHER STORIES
BY JACK LONDON
CONTENTS
MOON-FACE
THE LEOPARD MAN'S STORY
LOCAL COLOR
AMATEUR NIGHT
THE MINIONS OF MIDAS
THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH
ALL GOLD CANYON
PLANCHETTE
MOON-FACE
John Claverhouse was a moon-faced man. You know the kind,
cheek-bones wide apart, chin and forehead melting into the cheeks
to complete the perfect round, and the nose, broad and pudgy,
equidistant from the circumference, flattened against the very
centre of the face like a dough-ball upon the ceiling. Perhaps that
is why I hated him, for truly he had become an offense to my eyes,
and I believed the earth to be cumbered with his presence. Perhaps
my mother may have been superstitious of the moon and looked upon
it over the wrong shoulder at the wrong time.
Be that as it may, I hated John Claverhouse. Not that he had done me
what society would consider a wrong or an ill turn. Far from it. The
evil was of a deeper, subtler sort; so elusive, so intangible, as
to defy clear, definite analysis in words. We all experience such
things at some period in our lives. For the first time we see a
certain individual, one who the very instant before we did not dream
existed; and yet, at the first moment of meeting, we say: "I do not
like that man." Why do we not like him? Ah, we do not know why; we
know only that we do not. We have taken a dislike, that is all. And
so I with John Claverhouse.
What right had such a man to be happy? Yet he was an optimist. He
was always gleeful and laughing. All things were always all right,
curse him! Ah I how it grated on my soul that he should be so happy!
Other men could laugh, and it did not bother me. I even used to
laugh myself--before I met John Claverhouse.
But his laugh! It irritated me, maddened me, as nothing else under
the sun could irritate or madden me. It haunted me, gripped hold of
me, and would not let me go. It was a huge, Gargantuan laugh. Waking
or sleeping it was always with me, whirring and jarring across my
heart-strings like an enormous rasp. At break of day it came
whooping across the fields to spoil my pleasant morning revery.
Under the aching noonday glare, when the green things drooped and
the birds withdrew to the depths of the forest, and all nature
drowsed, his great "Ha! ha!" and "Ho! ho!" rose up to the sky and
challenged the sun. And at black midnight, from the lonely
cross-roads where he turned from town into his own place, came his
plaguey cachinnations to rouse me from my sleep and make me writhe
and clench my nails into my palms.
I went forth privily in the night-time, and turned his cattle into
his fields, and in the morning heard his whooping laugh as he drove
them out again. "It is nothing," he said; "the poor, dumb beasties
are not to be blamed for straying into fatter pastures."
He had a dog he called "Mars," a big, splendid brute, part
deer-hound and part blood-hound, and resembling both. Mars was a
great delight to him, and they were always together. But I bided
my time, and one day, when opportunity was ripe, lured the animal
away and settled for him with strychnine and beefsteak. It made
positively no impression on John Claverhouse. His laugh was as
hearty and frequent as ever, and his face as much like the full
moon as it always had been.
Then I set fire to his haystacks and his barn. But the next morning,
being Sunday, he went forth blithe and cheerful.
"Where are you going?" I asked him, as he went by the cross-roads.
"Trout," he said, and his face beamed like a full moon. "I just dote
on trout."
Was there ever such an impossible man! His whole harvest had gone up
in his haystacks and barn. It was uninsured, I knew. And yet, in the
face of famine and the rigorous winter, he went out gayly in quest
of a mess of trout, forsooth, because he "doted" on them! Had gloom
but rested, no matter how lightly, on his brow, or had his bovine
countenance grown long and serious and less like the moon, or had he
removed that smile but once from off his face, I am sure I could
have forgiven him for existing. But no, he grew only more cheerful
under misfortune.
I insulted him. He looked at me in slow and smiling surprise.
"I fight you? Why?" he asked slowly. And then he laughed. "You are so
funny! Ho! ho! You'll be the death of me! He! he! he! Oh! Ho! ho! ho!"
What would you? It was past endurance. By the blood of Judas, how
I hated him! Then there was that name--Claverhouse! What a name!
Wasn't it absurd? Claverhouse! Merciful heaven, WHY Claverhouse?
Again and again I asked myself that question. I should not have
minded Smith, or Brown, or Jones--but CLAVERHOUSE! I leave it to
you. Repeat it to yourself--Claverhouse. Just listen to the
ridiculous sound of it--Claverhouse! Should a man live with such
a name? I ask of you. "No," you say. And "No" said I.
But I bethought me of his mortgage. What of his crops and barn
destroyed, I knew he would be unable to meet it. So I got a shrewd,
close-mouthed, tight-fisted money-lender to get the mortgage
transferred to him. I did not appear but through this agent I forced
the foreclosure, and but few days (no more, believe me, than the
law allowed) were given John Claverhouse to remove his goods and
chattels from the premises. Then I strolled down to see how he took
it, for he had lived there upward of twenty years. But he met me
with his saucer-eyes twinkling, and the light glowing and spreading
in his face till it was as a full-risen moon.
"Ha! ha! ha!" he laughed. "The funniest tike, that youngster of
mine! Did you ever hear the like? Let me tell you. He was down
playing by the edge of the river when a piece of the bank caved in
and splashed him. 'O papa!' he cried; 'a great big puddle flewed
up and hit me.'"
He stopped and waited for me to join him in his infernal glee.
"I don't see any laugh in it," I said shortly, and I know my face
went sour.
He regarded me with wonderment, and then came the damnable light,
glowing and spreading, as I have described it, till his face shone
soft and warm, like the summer moon, and then the laugh--"Ha! ha!
That's funny! You don't see it, eh? He! he! Ho! ho! ho! He doesn't
see it! Why, look here. You know a puddle--"
But I turned on my heel and left him. That was the last. I could
stand it no longer. The thing must end right there, I thought, curse
him! The earth should be quit of him. And as I went over the hill, I
could hear his monstrous laugh reverberating against the sky.
Now, I pride myself on doing things neatly, and when I resolved to
kill John Claverhouse I had it in mind to do so in such fashion that
I should not look back upon it and feel ashamed. I hate bungling,
and I hate brutality. To me there is something repugnant in merely
striking a man with one's naked fist--faugh! it is sickening! So, to
shoot, or stab, or club John Claverhouse (oh, that name!) did not
appeal to me. And not only was I impelled to do it neatly and
artistically, but also in such manner that not the slightest
possible suspicion could be directed against me.
To this end I bent my intellect, and, after a week of profound
incubation, I hatched the scheme. Then I set to work. I bought a
water spaniel bitch, five months old, and devoted my whole attention
to her training. Had any one spied upon me, they would have remarked
that this training consisted entirely of one thing--RETRIEVING. I
taught the dog, which I called "Bellona," to fetch sticks I threw
into the water, and not only to fetch, but to fetch at once, without
mouthing or playing with them. The point was that she was to stop
for nothing, but to deliver the stick in all haste. I made a
practice of running away and leaving her to chase me, with the stick
in her mouth, till she caught me. She was a bright animal, and took
to the game with such eagerness that I was soon content.
After that, at the first casual opportunity, I presented Bellona to
John Claverhouse. I knew what I was about, for I was aware of a
little weakness of his, and of a little private sinning of which he
was regularly and inveterately guilty.
"No," he said, when I placed the end of the rope in his hand. "No,
you don't mean it." And his mouth opened wide and he grinned all
over his damnable moon-face.
"I--I kind of thought, somehow, you didn't like me," he explained.
"Wasn't it funny for me to make such a mistake?" And at the thought
he held his sides with laughter.
"What is her name?" he managed to ask between paroxysms.
"Bellona," I said.
"He! he!" he tittered. "What a funny name."
I gritted my teeth, for his mirth put them on edge, and snapped out
between them, "She was the wife of Mars, you know."
Then the light of the full moon began to suffuse his face, until he
exploded with: "That was my other dog. Well, I guess she's a widow
now. Oh! Ho! ho! E! he! he! Ho!" he whooped after me, and I turned
and fled swiftly over the hill.
The week passed by, and on Saturday evening I said to him, "You go
away Monday, don't you?"
He nodded his head and grinned.
"Then you won't have another chance to get a mess of those trout you
just 'dote' on."
But he did not notice the sneer. "Oh, I don't know," he chuckled.
"I'm going up to-morrow to try pretty hard."
Thus was assurance made doubly sure, and I went back to my house
hugging myself with rapture.
Early next morning I saw him go by with a dip-net and gunnysack, and
Bellona trotting at his heels. I knew where he was bound, and cut
out by the back pasture and climbed through the underbrush to the
top of the mountain. Keeping carefully out of sight, I followed the
crest along for a couple of miles to a natural amphitheatre in the
hills, where the little river raced down out of a gorge and stopped
for breath in a large and placid rock-bound pool. That was the spot!
I sat down on the croup of the mountain, where I could see all that
occurred, and lighted my pipe.
Ere many minutes had passed, John Claverhouse came plodding up the
bed of the stream. Bellona was ambling about him, and they were in
high feather, her short, snappy barks mingling with his deeper
chest-notes. Arrived at the pool, he threw down the dip-net and
sack, and drew from his hip-pocket what looked like a large, fat
candle. But I knew it to be a stick of "giant"; for such was his
method of catching trout. He dynamited them. He attached the fuse by
wrapping the "giant" tightly in a piece of cotton. Then he ignited
the fuse and tossed the explosive into the pool.
Like a flash, Bellona was into the pool after it. I could have
shrieked aloud for joy. Claverhouse yelled at her, but without
avail. He pelted her with clods and rocks, but she swam steadily on
till she got the stick of "giant" in her mouth, when she whirled
about and headed for shore. Then, for the first time, he realized
his danger, and started to run. As foreseen and planned by me, she
made the bank and took out after him. Oh, I tell you, it was great!
As I have said, the pool lay in a sort of amphitheatre. Above and
below, the stream could be crossed on stepping-stones. And around
and around, up and down and across the stones, raced Claverhouse and
Bellona. I could never have believed that such an ungainly man could
run so fast. But run he did, Bellona hot-footed after him, and
gaining. And then, just as she caught up, he in full stride, and she
leaping with nose at his knee, there was a sudden flash, a burst of
smoke, a terrific detonation, and where man and dog had been the
instant before there was naught to be seen but a big hole in the
ground.
"Death from accident while engaged in illegal fishing." That was the
verdict of the coroner's jury; and that is why I pride myself on the
neat and artistic way in which I finished off John Claverhouse.
There was no bungling, no brutality; nothing of which to be ashamed
in the whole transaction, as I am sure you will agree. No more does
his infernal laugh go echoing among the hills, and no more does his
fat moon-face rise up to vex me. My days are peaceful now, and my
night's sleep deep.
THE LEOPARD MAN'S STORY
He had a dreamy, far-away look in his eyes, and his sad, insistent
voice, gentle-spoken as a maid's, seemed the placid embodiment of
some deep-seated melancholy. He was the Leopard Man, but he did not
look it. His business in life, whereby he lived, was to appear in a
cage of performing leopards before vast audiences, and to thrill
those audiences by certain exhibitions of nerve for which his
employers rewarded him on a scale commensurate with the thrills
he produced.
As I say, he did not look it. He was narrow-hipped, narrow-shouldered,
and anaemic, while he seemed not so much oppressed by gloom as by a
sweet and gentle sadness, the weight of which was as sweetly and
gently borne. For an hour I had been trying to get a story out of
him, but he appeared to lack imagination. To him there was no romance
in his gorgeous career, no deeds of daring, no thrills--nothing but
a gray sameness and infinite boredom.
Lions? Oh, yes! he had fought with them. It was nothing. All you had
to do was to stay sober. Anybody could whip a lion to a standstill
with an ordinary stick. He had fought one for half an hour once.
Just hit him on the nose every time he rushed, and when he got
artful and rushed with his head down, why, the thing to do was to
stick out your leg. When he grabbed at the leg you drew it back and
hit hint on the nose again. That was all.
With the far-away look in his eyes and his soft flow of words he
showed me his scars. There were many of them, and one recent one
where a tigress had reached for his shoulder and gone down to the
bone. I could see the neatly mended rents in the coat he had on. His
right arm, from the elbow down, looked as though it had gone through
a threshing machine, what of the ravage wrought by claws and fangs.
But it was nothing, he said, only the old wounds bothered him
somewhat when rainy weather came on.
Suddenly his face brightened with a recollection, for he was really
as anxious to give me a story as I was to get it.
"I suppose you've heard of the lion-tamer who was hated by another
man?" he asked.
He paused and looked pensively at a sick lion in the cage opposite.
"Got the toothache," he explained. "Well, the lion-tamer's big play
to the audience was putting his head in a lion's mouth. The man who
hated him attended every performance in the hope sometime of seeing
that lion crunch down. He followed the show about all over the
country. The years went by and he grew old, and the lion-tamer grew
old, and the lion grew old. And at last one day, sitting in a front
seat, he saw what he had waited for. The lion crunched down, and
there wasn't any need to call a doctor."
The Leopard Man glanced casually over his finger nails in a manner
which would have been critical had it not been so sad.
"Now, that's what I call patience," he continued, "and it's my
style. But it was not the style of a fellow I knew. He was a little,
thin, sawed-off, sword-swallowing and juggling Frenchman. De Ville,
he called himself, and he had a nice wife. She did trapeze work and
used to dive from under the roof into a net, turning over once on
the way as nice as you please.
"De Ville had a quick temper, as quick as his hand, and his hand was
as quick as the paw of a tiger. One day, because the ring-master
called him a frog-eater, or something like that and maybe a little
worse, he shoved him against the soft pine background he used in
his knife-throwing act, so quick the ring-master didn't have time
to think, and there, before the audience, De Ville kept the air
on fire with his knives, sinking them into the wood all around the
ring-master so close that they passed through his clothes and most
of them bit into his skin.
"The clowns had to pull the knives out to get him loose, for he was
pinned fast. So the word went around to watch out for De Ville, and
no one dared be more than barely civil to his wife. And she was a
sly bit of baggage, too, only all hands were afraid of De Ville.
"But there was one man, Wallace, who was afraid of nothing. He was
the lion-tamer, and he had the self-same trick of putting his head
into the lion's mouth. He'd put it into the mouths of any of them,
though he preferred Augustus, a big, good-natured beast who could
always be depended upon.
"As I was saying, Wallace--'King' Wallace we called him--was afraid
of nothing alive or dead. He was a king and no mistake. I've seen
him drunk, and on a wager go into the cage of a lion that'd turned
nasty, and without a stick beat him to a finish. Just did it with
his fist on the nose.
"Madame de Ville--"
At an uproar behind us the Leopard Man turned quietly around. It was
a divided cage, and a monkey, poking through the bars and around the
partition, had had its paw seized by a big gray wolf who was trying
to pull it off by main strength. The arm seemed stretching out
longer end longer like a thick elastic, and the unfortunate monkey's
mates were raising a terrible din. No keeper was at hand, so the
Leopard Man stepped over a couple of paces, dealt the wolf a sharp
blow on the nose with the light cane he carried, and returned with a
sadly apologetic smile to take up his unfinished sentence as though
there had been no interruption.
"--looked at King Wallace and King Wallace looked at her, while De
Ville looked black. We warned Wallace, but it was no use. He laughed
at us, as he laughed at De Ville one day when he shoved De Ville's
head into a bucket of paste because he wanted to fight.
"De Ville was in a pretty mess--I helped to scrape him off; but he
was cool as a cucumber and made no threats at all. But I saw a
glitter in his eyes which I had seen often in the eyes of wild
beasts, and I went out of my way to give Wallace a final warning. He
laughed, but he did not look so much in Madame de Ville's direction
after that.
"Several months passed by. Nothing had happened and I was beginning
to think it all a scare over nothing. We were West by that time,
showing in 'Frisco. It was during the afternoon performance, and the
big tent was filled with women and children, when I went looking for
Red Denny, the head canvas-man, who had walked off with my
pocket-knife.
"Passing by one of the dressing tents I glanced in through a hole
in the canvas to see if I could locate him. He wasn't there, but
directly in front of me was King Wallace, in tights, waiting for his
turn to go on with his cage of performing lions. He was watching
with much amusement a quarrel between a couple of trapeze artists.
All the rest of the people in the dressing tent were watching the
same thing, with the exception of De Ville whom I noticed staring at
Wallace with undisguised hatred. Wallace and the rest were all too
busy following the quarrel to notice this or what followed.
"But I saw it through the hole in the canvas. De Ville drew his
handkerchief from his pocket, made as though to mop the sweat from
his face with it (it was a hot day), and at the same time walked
past Wallace's back. The look troubled me at the time, for not
only did I see hatred in it, but I saw triumph as well.
"'De Ville will bear watching,' I said to myself, and I really
breathed easier when I saw him go out the entrance to the circus
grounds and board an electric car for down town. A few minutes
later I was in the big tent, where I had overhauled Red Denny. King
Wallace was doing his turn and holding the audience spellbound. He
was in a particularly vicious mood, and he kept the lions stirred
up till they were all snarling, that is, all of them except old
Augustus, and he was just too fat and lazy and old to get stirred
up over anything.
"Finally Wallace cracked the old lion's knees with his whip and got
him into position. Old Augustus, blinking good-naturedly, opened his
mouth and in popped Wallace's head. Then the jaws came together,
CRUNCH, just like that."
The Leopard Man smiled in a sweetly wistful fashion, and the
far-away look came into his eyes.
"And that was the end of King Wallace," he went on in his sad, low
voice. "After the excitement cooled down I watched my chance and
bent over and smelled Wallace's head. Then I sneezed."
"It . . . it was . . .?" I queried with halting eagerness.
"Snuff--that De Ville dropped on his hair in the dressing tent. Old
Augustus never meant to do it. He only sneezed."
LOCAL COLOR
"I do not see why you should not turn this immense amount of unusual
information to account," I told him. "Unlike most men equipped with
similar knowledge, YOU have expression. Your style is--"
"Is sufficiently--er--journalese?" he interrupted suavely.
"Precisely! You could turn a pretty penny."
But he interlocked his fingers meditatively, shrugged his shoulders,
and dismissed the subject.
"I have tried it. It does not pay."
"It was paid for and published," he added, after a pause. "And I was
also honored with sixty days in the Hobo."
"The Hobo?" I ventured.
"The Hobo--" He fixed his eyes on my Spencer and ran along the
titles while he cast his definition. "The Hobo, my dear fellow, is
the name for that particular place of detention in city and county
jails wherein are assembled tramps, drunks, beggars, and the
riff-raff of petty offenders. The word itself is a pretty one, and
it has a history. Hautbois--there's the French of it. Haut, meaning
high, and bois, wood. In English it becomes hautboy, a wooden
musical instrument of two-foot tone, I believe, played with a double
reed, an oboe, in fact. You remember in 'Henry IV'--
"'The case of a treble hautboy
Was a mansion for him, a court.'
"From this to ho-boy is but a step, and for that matter the English
used the terms interchangeably. But--and mark you, the leap
paralyzes one--crossing the Western Ocean, in New York City,
hautboy, or ho-boy, becomes the name by which the night-scavenger is
known. In a way one understands its being born of the contempt for
wandering players and musical fellows. But see the beauty of it! the
burn and the brand! The night-scavenger, the pariah, the miserable,
the despised, the man without caste! And in its next incarnation,
consistently and logically, it attaches itself to the American
outcast, namely, the tramp. Then, as others have mutilated its
sense, the tramp mutilates its form, and ho-boy becomes exultantly
hobo. Wherefore, the large stone and brick cells, lined with double
and triple-tiered bunks, in which the Law is wont to incarcerate
him, he calls the Hobo. Interesting, isn't it?"
And I sat back and marvelled secretly at this encyclopaedic-minded
man, this Leith Clay-Randolph, this common tramp who made himself at
home in my den, charmed such friends as gathered at my small table,
outshone me with his brilliance and his manners, spent my spending
money, smoked my best cigars, and selected from my ties and studs
with a cultivated and discriminating eye.
He absently walked over to the shelves and looked into Loria's
"Economic Foundation of Society."
"I like to talk with you," he remarked. "You are not indifferently
schooled. You've read the books, and your economic interpretation of
history, as you choose to call it" (this with a sneer), "eminently
fits you for an intellectual outlook on life. But your sociologic
judgments are vitiated by your lack of practical knowledge. Now I,
who know the books, pardon me, somewhat better than you, know life,
too. I have lived it, naked, taken it up in both my hands and looked
at it, and tasted it, the flesh and the blood of it, and, being
purely an intellectual, I have been biased by neither passion nor
prejudice. All of which is necessary for clear concepts, and all of
which you lack. Ah! a really clever passage. Listen!"
And he read aloud to me in his remarkable style, paralleling the
text with a running criticism and commentary, lucidly wording
involved and lumbering periods, casting side and cross lights upon
the subject, introducing points the author had blundered past and
objections he had ignored, catching up lost ends, flinging a
contrast into a paradox and reducing it to a coherent and succinctly
stated truth--in short, flashing his luminous genius in a blaze of
fire over pages erstwhile dull and heavy and lifeless.
It is long since that Leith Clay-Randolph (note the hyphenated
surname) knocked at the back door of Idlewild and melted the heart
of Gunda. Now Gunda was cold as her Norway hills, though in her
least frigid moods she was capable of permitting especially
nice-looking tramps to sit on the back stoop and devour lone crusts
and forlorn and forsaken chops. But that a tatterdemalion out of the
night should invade the sanctity of her kitchen-kingdom and delay
dinner while she set a place for him in the warmest corner, was a
matter of such moment that the Sunflower went to see. Ah, the
Sunflower, of the soft heart and swift sympathy! Leith Clay-Randolph
threw his glamour over her for fifteen long minutes, whilst I
brooded with my cigar, and then she fluttered back with vague words
and the suggestion of a cast-off suit I would never miss.
"Surely I shall never miss it," I said, and I had in mind the dark
gray suit with the pockets draggled from the freightage of many
books--books that had spoiled more than one day's fishing sport.
"I should advise you, however," I added, "to mend the pockets
first."
But the Sunflower's face clouded. "N--o," she said, "the black one."
"The black one!" This explosively, incredulously. "I wear it quite
often. I--I intended wearing it to-night."
"You have two better ones, and you know I never liked it, dear," the
Sunflower hurried on. "Besides, it's shiny--"
"Shiny!"
"It--it soon will be, which is just the same, and the man is really
estimable. He is nice and refined, and I am sure he--"
"Has seen better days."
"Yes, and the weather is raw and beastly, and his clothes are
threadbare. And you have many suits--"
"Five," I corrected, "counting in the dark gray fishing outfit with
the draggled pockets."
"And he has none, no home, nothing--"
"Not even a Sunflower,"--putting my arm around her,--"wherefore he
is deserving of all things. Give him the black suit, dear--nay, the
best one, the very best one. Under high heaven for such lack there
must be compensation!"
"You ARE a dear!" And the Sunflower moved to the door and looked
back alluringly. "You are a PERFECT dear."
And this after seven years, I marvelled, till she was back again,
timid and apologetic.
"I--I gave him one of your white shirts. He wore a cheap horrid
cotton thing, and I knew it would look ridiculous. And then his
shoes were so slipshod, I let him have a pair of yours, the old ones
with the narrow caps--"
"Old ones!"
"Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did."
It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things.
And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did
not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like
an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from
grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again,
weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the
Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped
him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he
called "The Road."
"I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of
the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good
black suit.
And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper
and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman,
boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have
known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have
effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet,
prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the
Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that
night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to
love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also
plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to
farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and
once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the
attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of
Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let
the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often
I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet
he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was
Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he
was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from
emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged
him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den
with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle
a sense-delight for the problem's sake?
He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with
polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the
veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at
other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the
philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering;
there which I never caught--flashes of sincerity, of real feeling,
I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man
he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But
the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew.
"But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your
journalism?" I asked. "Never mind Loria. Tell me."
"Well, if I must." He flung one knee over the other with a short
laugh.
"In a town that shall be nameless," he began, "in fact, a city
of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave
for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front
was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had
in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a
reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable,
of course, but the room offered for scientific satire--"
I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off.
"I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the
genesis of the action," he explained. "However, the idea came.
What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The
Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So
I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or
the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator
whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic
office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a
glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside
the year.
"'Pale youth,' quoth I, 'I pray thee the way to the
sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.'
"He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness.
"'G'wan an' see the janitor. I don't know nothin' about the gas.'
"'Nay, my lily-white, the editor.'
"'Wich editor?' he snapped like a young bullterrier. 'Dramatic?
Sportin'? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News?
Editorial? Wich?'
"Which, I did not know. 'THE Editor,' I proclaimed stoutly.
'The ONLY Editor.'
"'Aw, Spargo!' he sniffed.
"'Of course, Spargo,' I answered. 'Who else?'
"'Gimme yer card,' says he.
"'My what?'
"'Yer card--Say! Wot's yer business, anyway?'
"And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I
reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre
chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough;
but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held
in the hand.
"'I am the census-taker Time,' I boomed in sepulchral tones. 'Beware
lest I knock too loud.'
"'Oh, I don't know,' he sneered.
"Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish.
"'Well, whatcher want?' he wheezed with returning breath.
"'I want Spargo, the only Spargo.'
"'Then leave go, an' I'll glide an' see.'
"'No you don't, my lily-white.' And I took a tighter grip on his
collar. 'No bouncers in mine, understand! I'll go along.'"
Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me.
"Do you know, Anak, you can't appreciate the joy of being the
buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn't do it if you wished. Your
pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would
prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality,
to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires
a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen.
"However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big,
beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating
at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was
talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I
should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung
up, he turned to me expectantly.
"'You are a very busy man,' I said.
"He jerked a nod with his head, and waited.
"'And after all, is it worth it?' I went on. 'What does life mean
that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in
sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin--'
"'Who are you? What are you?' he bellowed with a suddenness that
was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone.
"'A very pertinent question, sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a
man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither
profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless.
My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of
the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler
phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.'
"'What the hell--?'
"'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange
lodgements and multifarious--'
"'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?'
"'I want money.'
"He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have
reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is
no bank.'
"'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by
your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In
short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike
you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they
crave after it? Can they be happy without it?'
"I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled
the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and
assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said
he thought he'd do business with me.
"'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper
into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you,
I won't stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive
you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it,
and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political
economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the
point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and
interesting--tumble?'
"And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar.
"'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door.
"And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me.
"The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the
bounce, eh?'
"'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy
paper; 'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three
months, and then I'll make you jump.'
"And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a
pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or
verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him.
He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death
clutched him close."
"But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive
lad strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?"
Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to
you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion
master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of
rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of
fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism--pouf! a snap of
the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of
life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe,
nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for
a really pretty problem--"
"But the local color?" I prodded him.
"That's right," he replied. "Keep me in the running. Well, I took my
handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color),
dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for
a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and
brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the
state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to
dissatisfy the average citizen.
"From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was
particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good
people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it
costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps
in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to
the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures,
the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses.
Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly
humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The
main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and
robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out
for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in
dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only
to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars
and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the
taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction
and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made
the taxpayers wince.
"One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a
certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found
between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he
was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not
unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I
refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an
impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no
one to the faithfulness of the local color.
"Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest
against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the
pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I
tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was
excellently done, and the rhetoric--say! Just listen to the tail of
my peroration:
"'So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for
John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale;
that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with
us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls,
wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness
and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother
over-seas: "Our pride it is to know no spur of pride." Man has
forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the
harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs
and tears into bright shining dollars.'
"Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was
good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping
along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic
sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the
Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame';
'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement
railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'--and
so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity
and tone one would employ in a dissertation on 'Surplus Value,' or
'The Fallacies of Marxism,' but just the stuff the dear public likes.
"'Humph!' grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. 'Swift
gait you strike, my man.'
"I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of
his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff.
Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me,
searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished.
"'Where'd you work, you pencil-pusher?' he asked.
"'My maiden effort,' I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and
faintly simulating embarrassment.
"'Maiden hell! What salary do you want?'
"'Nay, nay,' I answered. 'No salary in mine, thank you most to
death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall
say my time is his.'
"'Save John Law,' he chuckled.
"'Save John Law,' said I.
"'How did you know I was bucking the police department?' he demanded
abruptly.
"'I didn't know, but I knew you were in training,' I answered.
'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with
three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate
cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy
glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been
turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand,
and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind,
means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new
chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell's candidate;
ergo, your turn to play.'
"He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket.
I put them away and puffed on the old one.
"'You'll do,' he jubilated. 'This stuff' (patting my copy) 'is the
first gun of the campaign. You'll touch off many another before
we're done. I've been looking for you for years. Come on in on the
editorial.'
"But I shook my head.
"'Come, now!' he admonished sharply. 'No shenanagan! The Cowbell
must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won't be happy
till it gets you. What say?'
"In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of
half an hour the only Spargo gave it up.
"'Remember,' he said, 'any time you reconsider, I'm open. No matter
where you are, wire me and I'll send the ducats to come on at once.'
"I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy--dope, he called it.
"'Oh, regular routine,' he said. 'Get it the first Thursday after
publication.'
"'Then I'll have to trouble you for a few scad until--'
"He looked at me and smiled. 'Better cough up, eh?'
"'Sure,' I said. 'Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.'
"And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear
Anak), and I pulled my freight . . . eh?--oh, departed.
"'Pale youth,' I said to Cerberus, 'I am bounced.' (He grinned with
pallid joy.) 'And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive
this little--' (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly,
to guard his head from the expected blow)--'this little memento.'
"I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his
surprise, he was too quick for me.
"'Aw, keep yer dirt,' he snarled.
"'I like you still better,' I said, adding a second fiver. 'You grow
perfect. But you must take it.'
"He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed
what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the
two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when
the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and
the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my
hand and caught them. The elevator boy's eyes bulged.
"'It's a way I have,' I said, pocketing them.
"'Some bloke's dropped 'em down the shaft,' he whispered, awed by
the circumstance.
"'It stands to reason,' said I.
"'I'll take charge of 'em,' he volunteered.
"'Nonsense!'
"'You'd better turn 'em over,' he threatened, 'or I stop the works.'
"'Pshaw!'
"And stop he did, between floors.
"'Young man,' I said, 'have you a mother?' (He looked serious, as
though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my
right sleeve with greatest care.) 'Are you prepared to die?' (I got
a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) 'But a minute, a
brief minute, stands between you and eternity.' (Here I crooked my
right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) 'Young man,
young man,' I trumpeted, 'in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart
dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.'
"It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on
the drag. You see, Anak, it's a habit I can't shake off of leaving
vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me.
"I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my
shoulder:
"'Hello, Cinders! Which way?'
"It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a
freight in Jacksonville. 'Couldn't see 'em fer cinders,' he
described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos.
The tramp nickname.
"'Bound south,' I answered. 'And how's Slim?'
"'Bum. Bulls is horstile.'
"'Where's the push?'
"'At the hang-out. I'll put you wise.'
"'Who's the main guy?'
"'Me, and don't yer ferget it.'"
The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped
him. "Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner."
"Certainly," he answered cheerfully. "Slim is in poor luck. Bull
means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the
push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct
me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader.
Slim claims that distinction.
"Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there
was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank
of a little purling stream.
"'Come on, you mugs!' Slim addressed them. 'Throw yer feet! Here's
Cinders, an' we must do 'em proud.'
"All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do
some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my
return to the fold after a year's separation. But I flashed my dough
and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take
my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to
this day. It's amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy,
and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which
twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with
alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was
great--an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in
primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a
drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G.
psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books
and compete with the laboratory.
"All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of
it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming
array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about
ten o'clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless,
the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked
like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol
Glenhart.
"'John Ambrose!' the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease
of long practice, stood up.
"'Vagrant, your Honor,' the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not
deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, 'Ten days,' and Chi Slim
sat down.
"And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to
the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in
turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the
offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all.
Simple, eh? Superb!
"Chi Slim nudged me. 'Give'm a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.'
"I shook my head.
"'G'wan,' he urged. 'Give 'm a ghost story The mugs'll take it all
right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.'
"'L. C. Randolph!' the clerk called.
"I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk
whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled.
"'You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?' his Honor
remarked sweetly.
"It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the
excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge
of the pit I had digged.
"'That's yer graft. Work it,' Slim prompted.
"'It's all over but the shouting,' I groaned back, but Slim, unaware
of the article, was puzzled.
"'Your Honor,' I answered, 'when I can get work, that is my
occupation.'
"'You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.' (Here his
Honor took up the morning's Cowbell and ran his eye up and down
a column I knew was mine.) 'Color is good,' he commented, an
appreciative twinkle in his eyes; 'pictures excellent, characterized
by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this . . .t his judge you have
depicted . . . you, ah, draw from life, I presume?'
"'Rarely, your I Honor,' I answered. 'Composites, ideals, rather
. . . er, types, I may say.'
"'But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,' he continued.
"'That is splashed on afterward,' I explained.
"'This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led
to believe?'
"'No, your Honor.'
"'Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?'
"'Nay, more, your Honor,' I said boldly, 'an ideal.'
"'Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture
to ask how much you received for this bit of work?'
"'Thirty dollars, your Honor.'
"'Hum, good!' And his tone abruptly changed. 'Young man, local color
is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty
days' imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty
dollars.'
"'Alas!' said I, 'I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.'
"'And thirty days more for wasting your substance.'
"'Next case!' said his Honor to the clerk.
"Slim was stunned. 'Gee!' he whispered. 'Gee the push gets ten days
and you get sixty. Gee!'"
Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on
his knees. "Returning to the original conversation, don't you find,
Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with
scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely--"
"Yes," I said absently; "yes."
AMATEUR NIGHT
The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up,
he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks.
His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed
eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The
sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little
he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the
symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some
day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure.
And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed
up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid
the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip
determinedly out into the street.
There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather
than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than
the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which
gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It
told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked
stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the
misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things.
But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. "I can guess what
you would tell me," the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her
lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended.
"And you have told me enough," he had gone on (heartlessly, she was
sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). "You have
done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered
into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly
topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in
English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and
how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do
newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but
there are no openings. If you knew how crowded--"
"But if there are no openings," she had interrupted, in turn, "how
did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to
get in?"
"They made themselves indispensable," was the terse response. "Make
yourself indispensable."
"But how can I, if I do not get the chance?"
"Make your chance."
"But how?" she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him
a most unreasonable man.
"How? That is your business, not mine," he said conclusively, rising
in token that the interview was at an end. "I must inform you, my
dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other
aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time
to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on
this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism."
She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had
conned the conversation over and over again. "But how?" she repeated
to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms
where she and her sister "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued
to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many
times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And,
further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty
and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their
way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business
enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna
and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of
school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had
capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture,
which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city
seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and
they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's secret
ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical
position first, so that she might have time and space in which to
determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But
the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or
her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room
rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished
voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.
"There's Max Irwin," Letty said, talking it over. "He's a journalist
with a national reputation. Go and see him, Ed. He knows how, and he
should be able to tell you how."
"But I don't know him," Edna objected.
"No more than you knew the editor you saw to-day."
"Y-e-s," (long and judicially), "but that's different."
"Not a bit different from the strange men and women you'll interview
when you've learned how," Letty encouraged.
"I hadn't looked at it in that light," Edna conceded. "After all,
where's the difference between interviewing Mr. Max Irwin for some
paper, or interviewing Mr. Max Irwin for myself? It will be
practice, too. I'll go and look him up in the directory."
"Letty, I know I can write if I get the chance," she announced
decisively a moment later. "I just FEEL that I have the feel of it,
if you know what I mean."
And Letty knew and nodded. "I wonder what he is like?" she asked
softly.
"I'll make it my business to find out," Edna assured her; "and I'll
let you know inside forty-eight hours."
Letty clapped her hands. "Good! That's the newspaper spirit! Make it
twenty-four hours and you are perfect!"
* * *
"--and I am very sorry to trouble you," she concluded the statement
of her case to Max Irwin, famous war correspondent and veteran
journalist.
"Not at all," he answered, with a deprecatory wave of the hand.
"If you don't do your own talking, who's to do it for you? Now
I understand your predicament precisely. You want to get on the
Intelligencer, you want to get in at once, and you have had no
previous experience. In the first place, then, have you any pull?
There are a dozen men in the city, a line from whom would be an
open-sesame. After that you would stand or fall by your own ability.
There's Senator Longbridge, for instance, and Claus Inskeep the
street-car magnate, and Lane, and McChesney--" He paused, with voice
suspended.
"I am sure I know none of them," she answered despondently.
"It's not necessary. Do you know any one that knows them? or any one
that knows any one else that knows them?"
Edna shook her head.
"Then we must think of something else," he went on, cheerfully.
"You'll have to do something yourself. Let me see."
He stopped and thought for a moment, with closed eyes and wrinkled
forehead. She was watching him, studying him intently, when his blue
eyes opened with a snap and his face suddenly brightened.
"I have it! But no, wait a minute."
And for a minute it was his turn to study her. And study her he did,
till she could feel her cheeks flushing under his gaze.
"You'll do, I think, though it remains to be seen," he said
enigmatically. "It will show the stuff that's in you, besides, and
it will be a better claim upon the Intelligencer people than all the
lines from all the senators and magnates in the world. The thing for
you is to do Amateur Night at the Loops."
"I--I hardly understand," Edna said, for his suggestion conveyed no
meaning to her. "What are the 'Loops'? and what is 'Amateur Night'?"
"I forgot you said you were from the interior. But so much the
better, if you've only got the journalistic grip. It will be a first
impression, and first impressions are always unbiased, unprejudiced,
fresh, vivid. The Loops are out on the rim of the city, near the
Park,--a place of diversion. There's a scenic railway, a water
toboggan slide, a concert band, a theatre, wild animals, moving
pictures, and so forth and so forth. The common people go there to
look at the animals and enjoy themselves, and the other people go
there to enjoy themselves by watching the common people enjoy
themselves. A democratic, fresh-air-breathing, frolicking affair,
that's what the Loops are.
"But the theatre is what concerns you. It's vaudeville. One turn
follows another--jugglers, acrobats, rubber-jointed wonders,
fire-dancers, coon-song artists, singers, players, female
impersonators, sentimental soloists, and so forth and so forth.
These people are professional vaudevillists. They make their living
that way. Many are excellently paid. Some are free rovers, doing a
turn wherever they can get an opening, at the Obermann, the Orpheus,
the Alcatraz, the Louvre, and so forth and so forth. Others cover
circuit pretty well all over the country. An interesting phase of
life, and the pay is big enough to attract many aspirants.
"Now the management of the Loops, in its bid for popularity,
instituted what is called 'Amateur Night'; that is to say, twice
a week, after the professionals have done their turns, the stage
is given over to the aspiring amateurs. The audience remains to
criticise. The populace becomes the arbiter of art--or it thinks it
does, which is the same thing; and it pays its money and is well
pleased with itself, and Amateur Night is a paying proposition to
the management.
"But the point of Amateur Night, and it is well to note it, is that
these amateurs are not really amateurs. They are paid for doing
their turn. At the best, they may be termed 'professional amateurs.'
It stands to reason that the management could not get people to face
a rampant audience for nothing, and on such occasions the audience
certainly goes mad. It's great fun--for the audience. But the thing
for you to do, and it requires nerve, I assure you, is to go out,
make arrangements for two turns, (Wednesday and Saturday nights,
I believe), do your two turns, and write it up for the Sunday
Intelligencer."
"But--but," she quavered, "I--I--" and there was a suggestion of
disappointment and tears in her voice.
"I see," he said kindly. "You were expecting something else,
something different, something better. We all do at first. But
remember the admiral of the Queen's Na-vee, who swept the floor and
polished up the handle of the big front door. You must face the
drudgery of apprenticeship or quit right now. What do you say?"
The abruptness with which he demanded her decision startled her. As
she faltered, she could see a shade of disappointment beginning to
darken his face.
"In a way it must be considered a test," he added encouragingly. "A
severe one, but so much the better. Now is the time. Are you game?"
"I'll try," she said faintly, at the same time making a note of the
directness, abruptness, and haste of these city men with whom she
was coming in contact.
"Good! Why, when I started in, I had the dreariest, deadliest
details imaginable. And after that, for a weary time, I did the
police and divorce courts. But it all came well in the end and did
me good. You are luckier in making your start with Sunday work. It's
not particularly great. What of it? Do it. Show the stuff you're
made of, and you'll get a call for better work--better class and
better pay. Now you go out this afternoon to the Loops, and engage
to do two turns."
"But what kind of turns can I do?" Edna asked dubiously.
"Do? That's easy. Can you sing? Never mind, don't need to sing.
Screech, do anything--that's what you're paid for, to afford
amusement, to give bad art for the populace to howl down. And when
you do your turn, take some one along for chaperon. Be afraid of no
one. Talk up. Move about among the amateurs waiting their turn, pump
them, study them, photograph them in your brain. Get the atmosphere,
the color, strong color, lots of it. Dig right in with both hands,
and get the essence of it, the spirit, the significance. What does
it mean? Find out what it means. That's what you're there for.
That's what the readers of the Sunday Intelligencer want to know.
"Be terse in style, vigorous of phrase, apt, concretely apt, in
similitude. Avoid platitudes and commonplaces. Exercise selection.
Seize upon things salient, eliminate the rest, and you have
pictures. Paint those pictures in words and the Intelligencer will
have you. Get hold of a few back numbers, and study the Sunday
Intelligencer feature story. Tell it all in the opening paragraph
as advertisement of contents, and in the contents tell it all over
again. Then put a snapper at the end, so if they're crowded for
space they can cut off your contents anywhere, reattach the snapper,
and the story will still retain form. There, that's enough. Study
the rest out for yourself."
They both rose to their feet, Edna quite carried away by his
enthusiasm and his quick, jerky sentences, bristling with the things
she wanted to know.
"And remember, Miss Wyman, if you're ambitious, that the aim and end
of journalism is not the feature article. Avoid the rut. The feature
is a trick. Master it, but don't let it master you. But master it
you must; for if you can't learn to do a feature well, you can never
expect to do anything better. In short, put your whole self into it,
and yet, outside of it, above it, remain yourself, if you follow me.
And now good luck to you."
They had reached the door and were shaking hands.
"And one thing more," he interrupted her thanks, "let me see your
copy before you turn it in. I may be able to put you straight here
and there."
Edna found the manager of the Loops a full-fleshed, heavy-jowled
man, bushy of eyebrow and generally belligerent of aspect, with an
absent-minded scowl on his face and a black cigar stuck in the midst
thereof. Symes was his name, she had learned, Ernst Symes.
"Whatcher turn?" he demanded, ere half her brief application had
left her lips.
"Sentimental soloist, soprano," she answered promptly, remembering
Irwin's advice to talk up.
"Whatcher name?" Mr. Symes asked, scarcely deigning to glance at her.
She hesitated. So rapidly had she been rushed into the adventure
that she had not considered the question of a name at all.
"Any name? Stage name?" he bellowed impatiently.
"Nan Bellayne," she invented on the spur of the moment.
"B-e-l-l-a-y-n-e. Yes, that's it."
He scribbled it into a notebook. "All right. Take your turn
Wednesday and Saturday."
"How much do I get?" Edna demanded.
"Two-an'-a-half a turn. Two turns, five. Getcher pay first Monday
after second turn."
And without the simple courtesy of "Good day," he turned his back on
her and plunged into the newspaper he had been reading when she
entered.
Edna came early on Wednesday evening, Letty with her, and in a
telescope basket her costume--a simple affair. A plaid shawl
borrowed from the washerwoman, a ragged scrubbing skirt borrowed
from the charwoman, and a gray wig rented from a costumer for
twenty-five cents a night, completed the outfit; for Edna had
elected to be an old Irishwoman singing broken-heartedly after her
wandering boy.
Though they had come early, she found everything in uproar. The main
performance was under way, the orchestra was playing and the
audience intermittently applauding. The infusion of the amateurs
clogged the working of things behind the stage, crowded the
passages, dressing rooms, and wings, and forced everybody into
everybody else's way. This was particularly distasteful to the
professionals, who carried themselves as befitted those of a higher
caste, and whose behavior toward the pariah amateurs was marked by
hauteur and even brutality. And Edna, bullied and elbowed and shoved
about, clinging desperately to her basket and seeking a dressing
room, took note of it all.
A dressing room she finally found, jammed with three other amateur
"ladies," who were "making up" with much noise, high-pitched voices,
and squabbling over a lone mirror. Her own make-up was so simple
that it was quickly accomplished, and she left the trio of ladies
holding an armed truce while they passed judgment upon her. Letty
was close at her shoulder, and with patience and persistence they
managed to get a nook in one of the wings which commanded a view of
the stage.
A small, dark man, dapper and debonair, swallow-tailed and
top-hatted, was waltzing about the stage with dainty, mincing steps,
and in a thin little voice singing something or other about somebody
or something evidently pathetic. As his waning voice neared the end
of the lines, a large woman, crowned with an amazing wealth of blond
hair, thrust rudely past Edna, trod heavily on her toes, and shoved
her contemptuously to the side. "Bloomin' hamateur!" she hissed as
she went past, and the next instant she was on the stage, graciously
bowing to the audience, while the small, dark man twirled
extravagantly about on his tiptoes.
"Hello, girls!"
This greeting, drawled with an inimitable vocal caress in every
syllable, close in her ear, caused Edna to give a startled little
jump. A smooth-faced, moon-faced young man was smiling at her
good-naturedly. His "make-up" was plainly that of the stock tramp
of the stage, though the inevitable whiskers were lacking.
"Oh, it don't take a minute to slap'm on," he explained, divining
the search in her eyes and waving in his hand the adornment in
question. "They make a feller sweat," he explained further. And
then, "What's yer turn?"
"Soprano--sentimental," she answered, trying to be offhand and at
ease.
"Whata you doin' it for?" he demanded directly.
"For fun; what else?" she countered.
"I just sized you up for that as soon as I put eyes on you. You
ain't graftin' for a paper, are you?"
"I never met but one editor in my life," she replied evasively, "and
I, he--well, we didn't get on very well together."
"Hittin' 'm for a job?"
Edna nodded carelessly, though inwardly anxious and cudgelling her
brains for something to turn the conversation.
"What'd he say?"
"That eighteen other girls had already been there that week."
"Gave you the icy mit, eh?" The moon-faced young man laughed and
slapped his thighs. "You see, we're kind of suspicious. The Sunday
papers 'd like to get Amateur Night done up brown in a nice little
package, and the manager don't see it that way. Gets wild-eyed at
the thought of it."
"And what's your turn?" she asked.
"Who? me? Oh, I'm doin' the tramp act tonight. I'm Charley Welsh,
you know."
She felt that by the mention of his name he intended to convey to
her complete enlightenment, but the best she could do was to say
politely, "Oh, is that so?"
She wanted to laugh at the hurt disappointment which came into his
face, but concealed her amusement.
"Come, now," he said brusquely, "you can't stand there and tell me
you've never heard of Charley Welsh? Well, you must be young. Why,
I'm an Only, the Only amateur at that. Sure, you must have seen me.
I'm everywhere. I could be a professional, but I get more dough out
of it by doin' the amateur."
"But what's an 'Only'?" she queried. "I want to learn."
"Sure," Charley Welsh said gallantly. "I'll put you wise. An 'Only'
is a nonpareil, the feller that does one kind of a turn better'n any
other feller. He's the Only, see?"
And Edna saw.
"To get a line on the biz," he continued, "throw yer lamps on me.
I'm the Only all-round amateur. To-night I make a bluff at the tramp
act. It's harder to bluff it than to really do it, but then it's
acting, it's amateur, it's art. See? I do everything, from Sheeny
monologue to team song and dance and Dutch comedian. Sure, I'm
Charley Welsh, the Only Charley Welsh."
And in this fashion, while the thin, dark man and the large, blond
woman warbled dulcetly out on the stage and the other professionals
followed in their turns, did Charley Welsh put Edna wise, giving her
much miscellaneous and superfluous information and much that she
stored away for the Sunday Intelligencer.
"Well, tra la loo," he said suddenly. "There's his highness chasin'
you up. Yer first on the bill. Never mind the row when you go on.
Just finish yer turn like a lady."
It was at that moment that Edna felt her journalistic ambition
departing from her, and was aware of an overmastering desire to be
somewhere else. But the stage manager, like an ogre, barred her
retreat. She could hear the opening bars of her song going up from
the orchestra and the noises of the house dying away to the silence
of anticipation.
"Go ahead," Letty whispered, pressing her hand; and from the other
side came the peremptory "Don't flunk!" of Charley Welsh.
But her feet seemed rooted to the floor, and she leaned weakly
against a shift scene. The orchestra was beginning over again, and
a lone voice from the house piped with startling distinctness:
"Puzzle picture! Find Nannie!"
A roar of laughter greeted the sally, and Edna shrank back. But the
strong hand of the manager descended on her shoulder, and with a
quick, powerful shove propelled her out on to the stage. His hand
and arm had flashed into full view, and the audience, grasping the
situation, thundered its appreciation. The orchestra was drowned out
by the terrible din, and Edna could see the bows scraping away
across the violins, apparently without sound. It was impossible for
her to begin in time, and as she patiently waited, arms akimbo and
ears straining for the music, the house let loose again (a favorite
trick, she afterward learned, of confusing the amateur by preventing
him or her from hearing the orchestra).
But Edna was recovering her presence of mind. She became aware, pit
to dome, of a vast sea of smiling and fun-distorted faces, of vast
roars of laughter, rising wave on wave, and then her Scotch blood
went cold and angry. The hard-working but silent orchestra gave her
the cue, and, without making a sound, she began to move her lips,
stretch forth her arms, and sway her body, as though she were really
singing. The noise in the house redoubled in the attempt to drown
her voice, but she serenely went on with her pantomime. This seemed
to continue an interminable time, when the audience, tiring of
its prank and in order to hear, suddenly stilled its clamor, and
discovered the dumb show she had been making. For a moment all was
silent, save for the orchestra, her lips moving on without a sound,
and then the audience realized that it had been sold, and broke out
afresh, this time with genuine applause in acknowledgment of her
victory. She chose this as the happy moment for her exit, and with a
bow and a backward retreat, she was off the stage in Letty's arms.
The worst was past, and for the rest of the evening she moved about
among the amateurs and professionals, talking, listening, observing,
finding out what it meant and taking mental notes of it all. Charley
Welsh constituted himself her preceptor and guardian angel, and so
well did he perform the self-allotted task that when it was all over
she felt fully prepared to write her article. But the proposition
had been to do two turns, and her native pluck forced her to live up
to it. Also, in the course of the intervening days, she discovered
fleeting impressions that required verification; so, on Saturday,
she was back again, with her telescope basket and Letty.
The manager seemed looking for her, and she caught an expression of
relief in his eyes when he first saw her. He hurried up, greeted
her, and bowed with a respect ludicrously at variance with his
previous ogre-like behavior. And as he bowed, across his shoulders
she saw Charley Welsh deliberately wink.
But the surprise had just begun. The manager begged to be introduced
to her sister, chatted entertainingly with the pair of them, and
strove greatly and anxiously to be agreeable. He even went so far as
to give Edna a dressing room to herself, to the unspeakable envy of
the three other amateur ladies of previous acquaintance. Edna was
nonplussed, and it was not till she met Charley Welsh in the passage
that light was thrown on the mystery.
"Hello!" he greeted her. "On Easy Street, eh? Everything slidin'
your way."
She smiled brightly.
"Thinks yer a female reporter, sure. I almost split when I saw'm
layin' himself out sweet an' pleasin'. Honest, now, that ain't yer
graft, is it?"
"I told you my experience with editors," she parried. "And honest
now, it was honest, too."
But the Only Charley Welsh shook his head dubiously. "Not that I
care a rap," he declared. "And if you are, just gimme a couple of
lines of notice, the right kind, good ad, you know. And if yer not,
why yer all right anyway. Yer not our class, that's straight."
After her turn, which she did this time with the nerve of an old
campaigner, the manager returned to the charge; and after saying
nice things and being generally nice himself, he came to the point.
"You'll treat us well, I hope," he said insinuatingly. "Do the right
thing by us, and all that?"
"Oh," she answered innocently, "you couldn't persuade me to do
another turn; I know I seemed to take and that you'd like to have
me, but I really, really can't."
"You know what I mean," he said, with a touch of his old bulldozing
manner.
"No, I really won't," she persisted. "Vaudeville's too--too wearing
on the nerves, my nerves, at any rate."
Whereat he looked puzzled and doubtful, and forbore to press the
point further.
But on Monday morning, when she came to his office to get her pay
for the two turns, it was he who puzzled her.
"You surely must have mistaken me," he lied glibly. "I remember
saying something about paying your car fare. We always do this, you
know, but we never, never pay amateurs. That would take the life and
sparkle out of the whole thing. No, Charley Welsh was stringing you.
He gets paid nothing for his turns. No amateur gets paid. The idea
is ridiculous. However, here's fifty cents. It will pay your
sister's car fare also. And,"--very suavely,--"speaking for the
Loops, permit me to thank you for the kind and successful
contribution of your services."
That afternoon, true to her promise to Max Irwin, she placed
her typewritten copy into his hands. And while he ran over it,
he nodded his head from time to time, and maintained a running
fire of commendatory remarks: "Good!--that's it!--that's the
stuff!--psychology's all right!--the very idea!--you've caught
it!--excellent!--missed it a bit here, but it'll go--that's
vigorous!--strong!--vivid!--pictures! pictures!--excellent!--most
excellent!"
And when he had run down to the bottom of the last page, holding out
his hand: "My dear Miss Wyman, I congratulate you. I must say you
have exceeded my expectations, which, to say the least, were large.
You are a journalist, a natural journalist. You've got the grip,
and you're sure to get on. The Intelligencer will take it, without
doubt, and take you too. They'll have to take you. If they don't,
some of the other papers will get you."
"But what's this?" he queried, the next instant, his face going
serious. "You've said nothing about receiving the pay for your
turns, and that's one of the points of the feature. I expressly
mentioned it, if you'll remember."
"It will never do," he said, shaking his head ominously, when she
had explained. "You simply must collect that money somehow. Let me
see. Let me think a moment."
"Never mind, Mr. Irwin," she said. "I've bothered you enough. Let me
use your 'phone, please, and I'll try Mr. Ernst Symes again."
He vacated his chair by the desk, and Edna took down the receiver.
"Charley Welsh is sick," she began, when the connection had been
made. "What? No I'm not Charley Welsh. Charley Welsh is sick, and
his sister wants to know if she can come out this afternoon and
draw his pay for him?"
"Tell Charley Welsh's sister that Charley Welsh was out this
morning, and drew his own pay," came back the manager's familiar
tones, crisp with asperity.
"All right," Edna went on. "And now Nan Bellayne wants to know if
she and her sister can come out this afternoon and draw Nan
Bellayne's pay?"
"What'd he say? What'd he say?" Max Irwin cried excitedly, as she
hung up.
"That Nan Bellayne was too much for him, and that she and her sister
could come out and get her pay and the freedom of the Loops, to boot."
"One thing, more," he interrupted her thanks at the door, as on her
previous visit. "Now that you've shown the stuff you're made of, I
should esteem it, ahem, a privilege to give you a line myself to the
Intelligencer people."
THE MINIONS OF MIDAS
Wade Atsheler is dead--dead by his own hand. To say that this was
entirely unexpected by the small coterie which knew him, would be
to say an untruth; and yet never once had we, his intimates, ever
canvassed the idea. Rather had we been prepared for it in some
incomprehensible subconscious way. Before the perpetration of the
deed, its possibility is remotest from our thoughts; but when we did
know that he was dead, it seemed, somehow, that we had understood
and looked forward to it all the time. This, by retrospective
analysis, we could easily explain by the fact of his great
trouble. I use "great trouble" advisedly. Young, handsome, with
an assured position as the right-hand man of Eben Hale, the great
street-railway magnate, there could be no reason for him to complain
of fortune's favors. Yet we had watched his smooth brow furrow and
corrugate as under some carking care or devouring sorrow. We had
watched his thick, black hair thin and silver as green grain under
brazen skies and parching drought. Who can forget, in the midst of
the hilarious scenes he toward the last sought with greater and
greater avidity--who can forget, I say, the deep abstractions and
black moods into which he fell? At such times, when the fun rippled
and soared from height to height, suddenly, without rhyme or reason,
his eyes would turn lacklustre, his brows knit, as with clenched
hands and face overshot with spasms of mental pain he wrestled on
the edge of the abyss with some unknown danger.
He never spoke of his trouble, nor were we indiscreet enough to ask.
But it was just as well; for had we, and had he spoken, our help and
strength could have availed nothing. When Eben Hale died, whose
confidential secretary he was--nay, well-nigh adopted son and full
business partner--he no longer came among us. Not, as I now know,
that our company was distasteful to him, but because his trouble
had so grown that he could not respond to our happiness nor find
surcease with us. Why this should be so we could not at the time
understand, for when Eben Hale's will was probated, the world
learned that he was sole heir to his employer's many millions, and
it was expressly stipulated that this great inheritance was given
to him without qualification, hitch, or hindrance in the exercise
thereof. Not a share of stock, not a penny of cash, was bequeathed
to the dead man's relatives. As for his direct family, one
astounding clause expressly stated that Wade Atsheler was to
dispense to Eben Hale's wife and sons and daughters whatever moneys
his judgement dictated, at whatever times he deemed advisable. Had
there been any scandal in the dead man's family, or had his sons
been wild or undutiful, then there might have been a glimmering
of reason in this most unusual action; but Eben Hale's domestic
happiness had been proverbial in the community, and one would have
to travel far and wide to discover a cleaner, saner, wholesomer
progeny of sons and daughters. While his wife--well, by those
who knew her best she was endearingly termed "The Mother of the
Gracchi." Needless to state, this inexplicable will was a nine day's
wonder; but the expectant public was disappointed in that no contest
was made.
It was only the other day that Eben Hale was laid away in his
stately marble mausoleum. And now Wade Atsheler is dead. The news
was printed in this morning's paper. I have just received through
the mail a letter from him, posted, evidently, but a short hour
before he hurled himself into eternity. This letter, which lies
before me, is a narrative in his own handwriting, linking together
numerous newspaper clippings and facsimiles of letters. The original
correspondence, he has told me, is in the hands of the police.
He has begged me, also, as a warning to society against a most
frightful and diabolical danger which threatens its very existence,
to make public the terrible series of tragedies in which he has
been innocently concerned. I herewith append the text in full:
It was in August, 1899, just after my return from my summer
vacation, that the blow fell. We did not know it at the time; we
had not yet learned to school our minds to such awful possibilities.
Mr. Hale opened the letter, read it, and tossed it upon my desk with
a laugh. When I had looked it over, I also laughed, saying, "Some
ghastly joke, Mr. Hale, and one in very poor taste." Find here,
my dear John, an exact duplicate of the letter in question.
OFFICE OF THE M. OF M. August 17, 1899.
MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron:
Dear Sir,--We desire you to realize upon whatever portion of your
vast holdings is necessary to obtain, IN CASH, twenty millions
of dollars. This sum we require you to pay over to us, or to our
agents. You will note we do not specify any given time, for it is
not our wish to hurry you in this matter. You may even, if it be
easier for you, pay us in ten, fifteen, or twenty instalments;
but we will accept no single instalment of less than a million.
Believe us, dear Mr. Hale, when we say that we embark upon this
course of action utterly devoid of animus. We are members of that
intellectual proletariat, the increasing numbers of which mark in
red lettering the last days of the nineteenth century. We have, from
a thorough study of economics, decided to enter upon this business.
It has many merits, chief among which may be noted that we can
indulge in large and lucrative operations without capital. So far,
we have been fairly successful, and we hope our dealings with you
may be pleasant and satisfactory.
Pray attend while we explain our views more fully. At the base of
the present system of society is to be found the property right. And
this right of the individual to hold property is demonstrated, in
the last analysis, to rest solely and wholly upon MIGHT. The mailed
gentlemen of William the Conqueror divided and apportioned England
amongst themselves with the naked sword. This, we are sure you will
grant, is true of all feudal possessions. With the invention of
steam and the Industrial Revolution there came into existence the
Capitalist Class, in the modern sense of the word. These capitalists
quickly towered above the ancient nobility. The captains of industry
have virtually dispossessed the descendants of the captains of war.
Mind, and not muscle, wins in to-day's struggle for existence. But
this state of affairs is none the less based upon might. The change
has been qualitative. The old-time Feudal Baronage ravaged the world
with fire and sword; the modern Money Baronage exploits the world by
mastering and applying the world's economic forces. Brain, and not
brawn, endures; and those best fitted to survive are the
intellectually and commercially powerful.
We, the M. of M., are not content to become wage slaves. The great
trusts and business combinations (with which you have your rating)
prevent us from rising to the place among you which our intellects
qualify us to occupy. Why? Because we are without capital. We are of
the unwashed, but with this difference: our brains are of the best,
and we have no foolish ethical nor social scruples. As wage slaves,
toiling early and late, and living abstemiously, we could not save
in threescore years--nor in twenty times threescore years--a sum of
money sufficient successfully to cope with the great aggregations of
massed capital which now exist. Nevertheless, we have entered the
arena. We now throw down the gage to the capital of the world.
Whether it wishes to fight or not, it shall have to fight.
Mr. Hale, our interests dictate us to demand of you twenty millions
of dollars. While we are considerate enough to give you reasonable
time in which to carry out your share of the transaction, please
do not delay too long. When you have agreed to our terms, insert
a suitable notice in the agony column of the "Morning Blazer."
We shall then acquaint you with our plan for transferring the sum
mentioned. You had better do this some time prior to October 1st.
If you do not, in order to show that we are in earnest we shall
on that date kill a man on East Thirty-ninth Street. He will be a
workingman. This man you do not know; nor do we. You represent a
force in modern society; we also represent a force--a new force.
Without anger or malice, we have closed in battle. As you will
readily discern, we are simply a business proposition. You are the
upper, and we the nether, millstone; this man's life shall be ground
out between. You may save him if you agree to our conditions and
act in time.
There was once a king cursed with a golden touch. His name we
have taken to do duty as our official seal. Some day, to protect
ourselves against competitors, we shall copyright it.
We beg to remain,
THE MINIONS OF MIDAS.
I leave it to you, dear John, why should we not have laughed over
such a preposterous communication? The idea, we could not but grant,
was well conceived, but it was too grotesque to be taken seriously.
Mr. Hale said he would preserve it as a literary curiosity, and
shoved it away in a pigeonhole. Then we promptly forgot its
existence. And as promptly, on the 1st of October, going over
the morning mail, we read the following:
OFFICE OF THE M. OF M., October 1, 1899.
MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron:
Dear Sir,--Your victim has met his fate. An hour ago, on East
Thirty-ninth Street, a workingman was thrust through the heart with
a knife. Ere you read this his body will be lying at the Morgue.
Go and look upon your handiwork.
On October 14th, in token of our earnestness in this matter, and in
case you do not relent, we shall kill a policeman on or near the
corner of Polk Street and Clermont Avenue.
Very cordially,
THE MINIONS OF MIDAS.
Again Mr. Hale laughed. His mind was full of a prospective deal with
a Chicago syndicate for the sale of all his street railways in that
city, and so he went on dictating to the stenographer, never giving
it a second thought. But somehow, I know not why, a heavy depression
fell upon me. What if it were not a joke, I asked myself, and turned
involuntarily to the morning paper. There it was, as befitted an
obscure person of the lower classes, a paltry half-dozen lines
tucked away in a corner, next a patent medicine advertisement:
Shortly after five o'clock this morning, on East Thirty-ninth
Street, a laborer named Pete Lascalle, while on his way to work,
was stabbed to the heart by an unknown assailant, who escaped by
running. The police have been unable to discover any motive for
the murder.
"Impossible!" was Mr. Hale's rejoinder, when I had read the item
aloud; but the incident evidently weighed upon his mind, for late in
the afternoon, with many epithets denunciatory of his foolishness,
he asked me to acquaint the police with the affair. I had the
pleasure of being laughed at in the Inspector's private office,
although I went away with the assurance that they would look into it
and that the vicinity of Polk and Clermont would be doubly patrolled
on the night mentioned. There it dropped, till the two weeks had
sped by, when the following note came to us through the mail:
OFFICE OF THE M. OF M. October 15, 1899.
MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron:
Dear Sir,--Your second victim has fallen on schedule time. We are
in no hurry; but to increase the pressure we shall henceforth
kill weekly. To protect ourselves against police interference we
shall hereafter inform you of the event but a little prior to or
simultaneously with the deed. Trusting this finds you in good health,
We are,
THE MINIONS OF MIDAS.
This time Mr. Hale took up the paper, and after a brief search, read to me
this account:
A DASTARDLY CRIME
Joseph Donahue, assigned only last night to special patrol duty in
the Eleventh Ward, at midnight was shot through the brain and
instantly killed. The tragedy was enacted in the full glare of the
street lights on the corner of Polk Street and Clermont Avenue. Our
society is indeed unstable when the custodians of its peace are thus
openly and wantonly shot down. The police have so far been unable
to obtain the slightest clue.
Barely had he finished this when the police arrived--the Inspector
himself and two of his keenest sleuths. Alarm sat upon their faces,
and it was plain that they were seriously perturbed. Though the
facts were so few and simple, we talked long, going over the affair
again and again. When the Inspector went away, he confidently
assured us that everything would soon be straightened out and the
assassins run to earth. In the meantime he thought it well to detail
guards for the protection of Mr. Hale and myself, and several more
to be constantly on the vigil about the house and grounds. After the
lapse of a week, at one o'clock in the afternoon, this telegram was
received:
OFFICE OF THE M. OF M. October 21, 1899.
MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron:
Dear Sir,--We are sorry to note how completely you have misunderstood
us. You have seen fit to surround yourself and household with armed
guards, as though, forsooth, we were common criminals, apt to break
in upon you and wrest away by force your twenty millions. Believe
us, this is farthest from our intention.
You will readily comprehend, after a little sober thought, that your
life is dear to us. Do not be afraid. We would not hurt you for the
world. It is our policy to cherish you tenderly and protect you from
all harm. Your death means nothing to us. If it did, rest assured
that we would not hesitate a moment in destroying you. Think this
over, Mr. Hale. When you have paid us our price, there will be need
of retrenchment. Dismiss your guards now, and cut down your expenses.
Within minutes of the time you receive this a nurse-girl will have
been choked to death in Brentwood Park. The body may be found in the
shrubbery lining the path which leads off to the left from the
band-stand.
Cordially yours,
THE MINIONS OF MIDAS.
The next instant Mr. Hale was at the telephone, warning the
Inspector of the impending murder. The Inspector excused himself in
order to call up Police Sub-station F and despatch men to the scene.
Fifteen minutes later he rang us up and informed us that the body
had been discovered, yet warm, in the place indicated. That evening
the papers teemed with glaring Jack-the-Strangler headlines,
denouncing the brutality of the deed and complaining about the
laxity of the police. We were also closeted with the Inspector, who
begged us by all means to keep the affair secret. Success, he said,
depended upon silence.
As you know, John, Mr. Hale was a man of iron. He refused to
surrender. But, oh, John, it was terrible, nay, horrible--this awful
something, this blind force in the dark. We could not fight, could
not plan, could do nothing save hold our hands and wait. And week
by week, as certain as the rising of the sun, came the notification
and death of some person, man or woman, innocent of evil, but just
as much killed by us as though we had done it with our own hands.
A word from Mr. Hale and the slaughter would have ceased. But he
hardened his heart and waited, the lines deepening, the mouth and
eyes growing sterner and firmer, and the face aging with the hours.
It is needless for me to speak of my own suffering during that
frightful period. Find here the letters and telegrams of the M.
of M., and the newspaper accounts, etc., of the various murders.
You will notice also the letters warning Mr. Hale of certain
machinations of commercial enemies and secret manipulations of
stock. The M. of M. seemed to have its hand on the inner pulse of
the business and financial world. They possessed themselves of and
forwarded to us information which our agents could not obtain.
One timely note from them, at a critical moment in a certain deal,
saved all of five millions to Mr. Hale. At another time they sent us
a telegram which probably was the means of preventing an anarchist
crank from taking my employer's life. We captured the man on his
arrival and turned him over to the police, who found upon him
enough of a new and powerful explosive to sink a battleship.
We persisted. Mr. Hale was grit clear through. He disbursed at the
rate of one hundred thousand per week for secret service. The aid
of the Pinkertons and of countless private detective agencies was
called in, and in addition to this thousands were upon our payroll.
Our agents swarmed everywhere, in all guises, penetrating all
classes of society. They grasped at a myriad clues; hundreds of
suspects were jailed, and at various times thousands of suspicious
persons were under surveillance, but nothing tangible came to light.
With its communications the M. of M. continually changed its
method of delivery. And every messenger they sent us was arrested
forthwith. But these inevitably proved to be innocent individuals,
while their descriptions of the persons who had employed them for
the errand never tallied. On the last day of December we received
this notification:
OFFICE OF THE M. OF M., December 31, 1899.
MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron:
Dear Sir,--Pursuant of our policy, with which we flatter ourselves
you are already well versed, we beg to state that we shall give a
passport from this Vale of Tears to Inspector Bying, with whom,
because of our attentions, you have become so well acquainted. It
is his custom to be in his private office at this hour. Even as you
read this he breathes his last.
Cordially yours,
THE MINIONS OF MIDAS.
I dropped the letter and sprang to the telephone. Great was my
relief when I heard the Inspector's hearty voice. But, even as he
spoke, his voice died away in the receiver to a gurgling sob, and
I heard faintly the crash of a falling body. Then a strange voice
hello'd me, sent me the regards of the M. of M., and broke the
switch. Like a flash I called up the public office of the Central
Police, telling them to go at once to the Inspector's aid in his
private office. I then held the line, and a few minutes later
received the intelligence that he had been found bathed in his own
blood and breathing his last. There were no eyewitnesses, and no
trace was discoverable of the murderer.
Whereupon Mr. Hale immediately increased his secret service till
a quarter of a million flowed weekly from his coffers. He was
determined to win out. His graduated rewards aggregated over ten
millions. You have a fair idea of his resources and you can see in
what manner he drew upon them. It was the principle, he affirmed,
that he was fighting for, not the gold. And it must be admitted that
his course proved the nobility of his motive. The police departments
of all the great cities cooperated, and even the United States
Government stepped in, and the affair became one of the highest
questions of state. Certain contingent funds of the nation were
devoted to the unearthing of the M. of M., and every government
agent was on the alert. But all in vain. The Minions of Midas
carried on their damnable work unhampered. They had their way and
struck unerringly.
But while he fought to the last, Mr. Hale could not wash his hands
of the blood with which they were dyed. Though not technically a
murderer, though no jury of his peers would ever have convicted him,
none the less the death of every individual was due to him. As I
said before, a word from him and the slaughter would have ceased.
But he refused to give that word. He insisted that the integrity of
society was assailed; that he was not sufficiently a coward to
desert his post; and that it was manifestly just that a few should
be martyred for the ultimate welfare of the many. Nevertheless this
blood was upon his head, and he sank into deeper and deeper gloom. I
was likewise whelmed with the guilt of an accomplice. Babies were
ruthlessly killed, children, aged men; and not only were these
murders local, but they were distributed over the country. In the
middle of February, one evening, as we sat in the library, there
came a sharp knock at the door. On responding to it I found, lying
on the carpet of the corridor, the following missive:
OFFICE OF THE M. OF M., February 15, 1900.
MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron:
Dear Sir,--Does not your soul cry out upon the red harvest it
is reaping? Perhaps we have been too abstract in conducting our
business. Let us now be concrete. Miss Adelaide Laidlaw is a
talented young woman, as good, we understand, as she is beautiful.
She is the daughter of your old friend, Judge Laidlaw, and we happen
to know that you carried her in your arms when she was an infant.
She is your daughter's closest friend, and at present is visiting
her. When your eyes have read thus far her visit will have
terminated.
Very cordially,
THE MINIONS OF MIDAS.
My God! did we not instantly realize the terrible import! We
rushed through the dayrooms--she was not there--and on to her own
apartments. The door was locked, but we crashed it down by hurling
ourselves against it. There she lay, just as she had finished
dressing for the opera, smothered with pillows torn from the couch,
the flush of life yet on her flesh, the body still flexible and
warm. Let me pass over the rest of this horror. You will surely
remember, John, the newspaper accounts.
Late that night Mr. Hale summoned me to him, and before God did
pledge me most solemnly to stand by him and not to compromise,
even if all kith and kin were destroyed.
The next day I was surprised at his cheerfulness. I had thought he
would be deeply shocked by this last tragedy--how deep I was soon to
learn. All day he was light-hearted and high-spirited, as though at
last he had found a way out of the frightful difficulty. The next
morning we found him dead in his bed, a peaceful smile upon his
careworn face--asphyxiation. Through the connivance of the police
and the authorities, it was given out to the world as heart disease.
We deemed it wise to withhold the truth; but little good has it done
us, little good has anything done us.
Barely had I left that chamber of death, when--but too late--the
following extraordinary letter was received:
OFFICE OF THE M. of M., February 17, 1900.
MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron:
Dear Sir,--You will pardon our intrusion, we hope, so closely upon
the sad event of day before yesterday; but what we wish to say may
be of the utmost importance to you. It is in our mind that you may
attempt to escape us. There is but one way, apparently, as you have
ere this doubtless discovered. But we wish to inform you that even
this one way is barred. You may die, but you die failing and
acknowledging your failure. Note this: WE ARE PART AND PARCEL OF
YOUR POSSESSIONS. WITH YOUR MILLIONS WE PASS DOWN TO YOUR HEIRS
AND ASSIGNS FOREVER.
We are the inevitable. We are the culmination of industrial and
social wrong. We turn upon the society that has created us. We are
the successful failures of the age, the scourges of a degraded
civilization.
We are the creatures of a perverse social selection. We meet force
with force. Only the strong shall endure. We believe in the survival
of the fittest. You have crushed your wage slaves into the dirt and
you have survived. The captains of war, at your command, have shot
down like dogs your employees in a score of bloody strikes. By such
means you have endured. We do not grumble at the result, for we
acknowledge and have our being in the same natural law. And now the
question has arisen: UNDER THE PRESENT SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT, WHICH OF
US SHALL SURVIVE? We believe we are the fittest. You believe you are
the fittest. We leave the eventuality to time and law.
Cordially yours,
THE MINIONS OF MIDAS.
John, do you wonder now that I shunned pleasure and avoided friends?
But why explain? Surely this narrative will make everything clear.
Three weeks ago Adelaide Laidlaw died. Since then I have waited
in hope and fear. Yesterday the will was probated and made public.
Today I was notified that a woman of the middle class would be
killed in Golden Gate Park, in faraway San Francisco. The
despatches in to-night's papers give the details of the brutal
happening--details which correspond with those furnished me in
advance.
It is useless. I cannot struggle against the inevitable. I have been
faithful to Mr. Hale and have worked hard. Why my faithfulness
should have been thus rewarded I cannot understand. Yet I cannot be
false to my trust, nor break my word by compromising. Still, I have
resolved that no more deaths shall be upon my head. I have willed
the many millions I lately received to their rightful owners. Let
the stalwart sons of Eben Hale work out their own salvation. Ere
you read this I shall have passed on. The Minions of Midas are
all-powerful. The police are impotent. I have learned from them that
other millionnaires have been likewise mulcted or persecuted--how
many is not known, for when one yields to the M. of M., his mouth is
thenceforth sealed. Those who have not yielded are even now reaping
their scarlet harvest. The grim game is being played out. The
Federal Government can do nothing. I also understand that similar
branch organizations have made their appearance in Europe. Society
is shaken to its foundations. Principalities and powers are as
brands ripe for the burning. Instead of the masses against the
classes, it is a class against the classes. We, the guardians of
human progress, are being singled out and struck down. Law and order
have failed.
The officials have begged me to keep this secret. I have done so,
but can do so no longer. It has become a question of public import,
fraught with the direst consequences, and I shall do my duty before
I leave this world by informing it of its peril. Do you, John, as my
last request, make this public. Do not be frightened. The fate of
humanity rests in your hand. Let the press strike off millions of
copies; let the electric currents sweep it round the world; wherever
men meet and speak, let them speak of it in fear and trembling. And
then, when thoroughly aroused, let society arise in its might and
cast out this abomination.
Yours, in long farewell,
WADE ATSHELER.
THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH
When I look back, I realize what a peculiar friendship it was.
First, there was Lloyd Inwood, tall, slender, and finely knit,
nervous and dark. And then Paul Tichlorne, tall, slender, and finely
knit, nervous and blond. Each was the replica of the other in
everything except color. Lloyd's eyes were black; Paul's were blue.
Under stress of excitement, the blood coursed olive in the face of
Lloyd, crimson in the face of Paul. But outside this matter of
coloring they were as like as two peas. Both were high-strung, prone
to excessive tension and endurance, and they lived at concert pitch.
But there was a trio involved in this remarkable friendship, and the
third was short, and fat, and chunky, and lazy, and, loath to say,
it was I. Paul and Lloyd seemed born to rivalry with each other, and
I to be peacemaker between them. We grew up together, the three of
us, and full often have I received the angry blows each intended for
the other. They were always competing, striving to outdo each other,
and when entered upon some such struggle there was no limit either
to their endeavors or passions.
This intense spirit of rivalry obtained in their studies and their
games. If Paul memorized one canto of "Marmion," Lloyd memorized two
cantos, Paul came back with three, and Lloyd again with four, till
each knew the whole poem by heart. I remember an incident that
occurred at the swimming hole--an incident tragically significant of
the life-struggle between them. The boys had a game of diving to the
bottom of a ten-foot pool and holding on by submerged roots to see
who could stay under the longest. Paul and Lloyd allowed themselves
to be bantered into making the descent together. When I saw their
faces, set and determined, disappear in the water as they sank
swiftly down, I felt a foreboding of something dreadful. The moments
sped, the ripples died away, the face of the pool grew placid and
untroubled, and neither black nor golden head broke surface in
quest of air. We above grew anxious. The longest record of the
longest-winded boy had been exceeded, and still there was no sign.
Air bubbles trickled slowly upward, showing that the breath had been
expelled from their lungs, and after that the bubbles ceased to
trickle upward. Each second became interminable, and, unable longer
to endure the suspense, I plunged into the water.
I found them down at the bottom, clutching tight to the roots, their
heads not a foot apart, their eyes wide open, each glaring fixedly
at the other. They were suffering frightful torment, writhing and
twisting in the pangs of voluntary suffocation; for neither would
let go and acknowledge himself beaten. I tried to break Paul's hold
on the root, but he resisted me fiercely. Then I lost my breath
and came to the surface, badly scared. I quickly explained the
situation, and half a dozen of us went down and by main strength
tore them loose. By the time we got them out, both were unconscious,
and it was only after much barrel-rolling and rubbing and pounding
that they finally came to their senses. They would have drowned
there, had no one rescued them.
When Paul Tichlorne entered college, he let it be generally
understood that he was going in for the social sciences. Lloyd
Inwood, entering at the same time, elected to take the same course.
But Paul had had it secretly in mind all the time to study the
natural sciences, specializing on chemistry, and at the last moment
he switched over. Though Lloyd had already arranged his year's work
and attended the first lectures, he at once followed Paul's lead and
went in for the natural sciences and especially for chemistry. Their
rivalry soon became a noted thing throughout the university. Each
was a spur to the other, and they went into chemistry deeper than
did ever students before--so deep, in fact, that ere they took their
sheepskins they could have stumped any chemistry or "cow college"
professor in the institution, save "old" Moss, head of the
department, and even him they puzzled and edified more than once.
Lloyd's discovery of the "death bacillus" of the sea toad, and his
experiments on it with potassium cyanide, sent his name and that of
his university ringing round the world; nor was Paul a whit behind
when he succeeded in producing laboratory colloids exhibiting
amoeba-like activities, and when he cast new light upon the
processes of fertilization through his startling experiments with
simple sodium chlorides and magnesium solutions on low forms of
marine life.
It was in their undergraduate days, however, in the midst of their
profoundest plunges into the mysteries of organic chemistry, that
Doris Van Benschoten entered into their lives. Lloyd met her first,
but within twenty-four hours Paul saw to it that he also made her
acquaintance. Of course, they fell in love with her, and she became
the only thing in life worth living for. They wooed her with equal
ardor and fire, and so intense became their struggle for her that
half the student-body took to wagering wildly on the result. Even
"old" Moss, one day, after an astounding demonstration in his
private laboratory by Paul, was guilty to the extent of a month's
salary of backing him to become the bridegroom of Doris Van
Benschoten.
In the end she solved the problem in her own way, to everybody's
satisfaction except Paul's and Lloyd's. Getting them together, she
said that she really could not choose between them because she loved
them both equally well; and that, unfortunately, since polyandry was
not permitted in the United States she would be compelled to forego
the honor and happiness of marrying either of them. Each blamed the
other for this lamentable outcome, and the bitterness between them
grew more bitter.
But things came to a head eno