The car stopped with a jar on a side street, some distance from the quarantined section. Seated on the curb a woman was wailing over the stiffened form of a young child. The boy"s teeth were clenched and his face darkly suffused.
"Convulsions," said Esme.
The two girls were out of the car simultaneously. The agonized mother, an Italian, was deaf to Esme"s persuasions that the child be turned over to them.
"What shall we do?" she asked, turning to Kathleen in dismay. "I think he"s dying, and I can"t make the woman listen."
Something of her father"s stern decisiveness of character was in Kathleen Pierce.
"Don"t be a fool!" she said briskly to the mother, and she plucked the child away from her. "Start the car, Esme."
The woman began to shriek. A crowd gathered. O"Farrell providentially appeared from around a corner. "Grab her, you," she directed O"Farrell.
The politician hesitated. "What"s the game?" he began. Then he caught sight of Esme. "Oh, it"s you, Miss Elliot. Sure. Hi! Can it!" he shouted, fending off the distracted mother. "They"ll take the kid to the hospital. See? You go along quiet, now."
Speeding beyond all laws, but under protection of their red cross, they all but ran down Dr. Merritt and stopped to take him in. He confirmed Esme"s diagnosis.
"It"ll be touch and go whether we save him," said he.
Esme carried the stricken child into the hospital ward. The two volunteers waited outside for word. In an hour it came. The boy would probably live, thanks to their prompt.i.tude.
"But you ought not to be picking up chance infants around the district,"
he protested. "It isn"t safe."
"Oh, we belong to the St. Bernard tribe," retorted Miss Pierce. "We take "em as we find "em. Hugh, come and lunch with us."
The grayish young man looked at her wistfully. "Haven"t time," he said.
"No: I didn"t suppose you"d step aside from the th.o.r.n.y path, even to eat," she retorted; and Esme, hearing the new tone under the flippant words, knew that all was well with the girl, and envied her with a great and gentle envy.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV
VOX POPULI
These were the days when Hal Surtaine worked with a sense of wild freedom from all personal bonds. He had definitely broken with his father. He had challenged every interest in Worthington from which there was anything to expect commercially. He had peremptorily banished Esme Elliot from his heart and his hopes, though she still forced entrance to his thoughts and would not be denied, there, the precarious rights of an undesired guest. He was now simply and solely a journalist with a mind single to his purpose, to go down fighting the best fight there was in him. Defeat, he believed, was practically certain. He would make it a defeat of which no man need be ashamed.
The handling of the epidemic news, Hal left to his colleagues, devoting his own pen to a vigorous defense of the "Clarion"s" position and a.s.sertion of its policy, in the editorial columns. Concealment and suppression, he pointed out, had been the chief factor in the disastrous spread of the contagion. Early recognition of the danger and a frank fighting policy would have saved most of the sacrificed lives. The blame lay, not with those who had disclosed the peril, but with those who had fostered it by secrecy; probing deeper into it, with those who had blocked such reform of housing and sanitation as would have checked a filth disease like typhus. In time this would be indicated more specifically. Tenements which netted twelve per cent to their owners and bred plagues, the "Clarion" observed editorially, were good private but poor public investments. Whereupon a number of highly regarded Christian citizens began to refer to the editor as an anarchist.
The "Clarion" principle of ascertaining "the facts behind the news" had led naturally to an inquiry into ownership of the Rookeries. Wayne had this specifically in charge and reported sensational results from the first.
"It"ll be a corking follow-up feature," he said. "Later we can hitch it up to the Housing Reform Bill."
"Make a fifth page full spread of it for Monday."
"With pictures of the owners," suggested Wayne.
"Why not this way? Make a triple lay-out for each one. First, a picture of the tenement with the number of deaths and cases underneath. Then the half-tone of the owner. And, beyond, the picture of the house he lives in. That"ll give contrast."
"Good!" said Wayne. "Fine and yellow."
By Sunday, four days after the opening story, all the material for the second big spread was ready except for one complication. Some involution of trusteeship in the case of two freeholds in Sadler"s Shacks, at the heart of the Rookeries, had delayed access to the records. These two were Number 3 and Number 9 Sperry Street, the latter dubbed "the Pest-Egg" by the "Clarion," as being the tenement in which the pestilence was supposed to have originated. These two last clues, Wayne was sure, would be run down before evening. Already the net of publicity had dragged in, among other owners of the dangerous property, a high city official, an important merchant, a lady much given to blatant platform philanthropies, and the Reverend Dr. Wales"s fashionable church. It was, indeed, a n.o.ble company of which the "Clarion" proposed to make martyrs on the morrow.
One man quite unconnected with any twelve per cent ownership, however, had sworn within his ravaged soul that there should be no morrow"s "Clarion." Max Veltman, four days previously, had crawled home to his apartment after a visit to the drug store where he had purchased certain acids. With these he worked cunningly and with complete absorption in his pursuit, neither stirring out of his own place nor communicating with any fellow being. Consequently he knew nothing of the sensation which had convulsed Worthington, nor of the "Clarion"s" change of policy. To his inflamed mind the Surtaine organ was a noxious thing, and Harrington Surtaine the guilty partner in the profits of Milly"s death who had rejected the one chance to make amends.
Carrying a carefully wrapped bundle, he went forth into the streets on Sunday evening, and wandered into the Rookeries district. A red-necked man, standing on a barrel, was making a speech to a big crowd gathered at one of the corners. Dimly-heard, the word "Clarion" came to Veltman"s ears.
"What"s he saying?" he asked a neighbor.
"He"s roastin" the ---- ---- "Clarion,"" replied the man. "We ought to go up there an" tear the buildin" down."
To Veltman it seemed quite natural that popular rage should be directed toward the object of his hatred. He sat down weakly upon the curb and waited to see what would happen.
Another chance auditor of that speech did not wait. McGuire Ellis stayed just long enough to scent danger, and hurried back to the office.
"Trouble brewing down in the Rookeries," he told Hal.
"More than usual?"
"Different from the usual. There"s a mob considering paying us a visit."
"The new press!" exclaimed Hal.
"Just what I was thinking. A rock or a bullet in its pretty little insides would cost money."
"We"d better notify Police Headquarters."
"I have. They gave me the laugh. Told me it was a pipe-dream. They"re sore on us because of our attack on the department for dodging saloon law enforcement."
"I don"t like this, Mac," said Hal. "What a fool I was to put the press in the most exposed place."
"Fortify it."
"With what?"
"The rolls."
Print-paper comes from the pulp-mills in huge cylinders, seven feet long by four in diameter. The highest-powered small arm could not send a bullet through the close-wrapped fabric. Ellis"s plan offered perfect protection if there was enough material to build the fortification. The entire pressroom force was at once set to work, and in half an hour the delicate and costly mechanism was protected behind an impenetrable barrier which shut it off from view except at the south end. The supply of rolls had fallen a little short.
"Let "em smash the window if they like," said Ellis. "Plate-gla.s.s insurance covers that. I wish we had something for that corner."
"With a couple of revolvers we could guard it from these windows," said Hal. "But where are we to get revolvers on a Sunday night?"
"Leave that to me," said Ellis, and went out.