"You let him off without telling his name to-night. And that made me think maybe he wasn"t in wrong so far as I thought. Maybe there were--what-ye-call-"em?--mitigating circ.u.mstances. Were there?"
A light broke in upon the Reverend Norman Hale. "Did you think your son was Milly Neal"s lover? He wasn"t."
"Are you sure?" gasped the father.
"As sure as of my faith in Heaven."
The old man straightened up, drawing a breath so profound that it seemed to raise his stature.
"I wouldn"t take a million dollars for that word," he declared.
"But your own part in this?" queried the other in wonderment. "I hated to have to say--"
"What does it matter?"
"You have no concern for yourself?" puzzled the minister.
"Oh, I"ll come out on top. I always come out on top. What got to my heart was my boy. I thought he"d gone wrong. And now I know he hasn"t."
The old charlatan"s strong hand fell on his a.s.sailant"s shoulder, then slipped down supportingly under his arm.
"You look pretty shaky," said he with winning solicitude. "Let me take you home in my car. It"s waiting outside."
The Reverend Norman Hale accepted, marveling greatly over the complex miracle of the soul of man--who is formed in the image of his Maker.
CHAPTER x.x.xII
THE WARNING
Tradition of the "Clarion" office embalms "the evening the typhus story broke" as a nightmare out of which was born history. Chronologically, according to the veracious records of Bim the Guardian of Portals, the tumult began at exactly 10.47, with the arrival of Mr. McGuire Ellis, traveling up the staircase five steps at a jump and calling in a strangled voice for Wayne. That usually controlled journalist rushed out of an inner room in alarm, demanding to know whether New York City had been whelmed with a tidal wave or the King of England murdered in his bed, and in an instant was struggling in the grasp of his fellow editor.
"What"s left of the epidemic spread?" demanded the new arrival breathlessly.
"The killed story?"
"What"s left of it?" clamored Ellis, dancing all over his colleague"s feet. "Can you find the copy? Notes? Anything?"
"Proofs," said Wayne. "I saved a set."
Ellis sat down in a chair and regarded his underling with an expression of stupefied benevolence.
"Wayne," he said, "you"re a genius. You"re the fine flower and perfect blossom of American journalism. I love you, Wayne. With pa.s.sionate fervor, I love you. Now, _gitta move on_!!!" His voice soared and exploded. "We"re going to run it to-morrow!"
"To-morrow? How? It isn"t up to date. n.o.body"s touched it since--"
"Bring it up to date! Fire every man in the office out on it. Tear the hide off the old paper and smear the story all over the front page. Haul in your eyes and _start_!"
The whirl of what ensued swamped even Bim"s cynic and philosophic calm.
Amidst a buzz of telephones and a mighty scurrying of messengers the staff of the "Clarion" was gathered into the fold, on a "drop-everything" emergency call, and instantly dispersed again to the hospitals, the homes of the health officials, the undertakers"
establishments, the cemeteries, and all other possible sources of information. The composing-room seethed and clanged. Copy-readers yelled frantically through tubes, and received columns of proofs which, under the ruthless slaughter of their blue pencils, returned as "stickfuls,"
that room might be made for the great story. Cable news was slashed right and left. Telegraph "skeletons" waited in vain for their bones to be clothed with the flesh of print. The Home Advice Department sank with all on board, and the most popular sensational preacher in town, who had that evening made a stirring anti-suffrage speech full of the most unfailing jokes, fell out of the paper and broke his heart. The carnage in news was general and frightful. Two pages plus of a story that "breaks" after 10 P.M. calls for heroic measures.
At 10.53 Mr. Harrington Surtaine arrived, hardly less tempestuously than his predecessor. He did not even greet Bim as he pa.s.sed through the gate, which was unusual; but went direct to Ellis.
"Can we do it, Mac?"
"The epidemic story? Yes. There was a proof saved."
"Good. Can you do the story of the meeting?"
Ellis hesitated. "All of it?"
"Every bit. Leave out nothing."
"Hadn"t you better think it over?"
"I"ve thought."
"It"ll hit the old--your father pretty hard."
"I can"t help it."
A surge of human pity overswept Ellis"s stimulated journalistic keenness. "You don"t _have_ to do this, Hal," he suggested. "No other paper--"
"I do have to do it," retorted the other. "And worse."
Ellis stared.
"I"ve got to print the story of Milly"s death: the facts just as they happened. And I"ve got to write it myself."
The professional zest surged up again in McGuire Ellis. "My Lord!" he exclaimed. "_What a paper to-morrow"s "Clarion" will be!_ But why? Why?
Why the Neal story--now?"
"Because I can"t print the epidemic spread unless I print the other.
I"ve given my word. I told my father if ever I suppressed news for my own protection, I"d give up the fight and play the game like all the other papers. I"ve tried it. Mac, it isn"t my game."
"No," replied his subordinate in a curious tone, "it isn"t your game."
"You"ll write the meeting?"
"Yes."
"Save out a column for my story."