"Then, do you mean to say," demanded Mr. Asher, "that this fellow Maloney"s the boss here, and that what he says goes?"
Smith bowed.
"Exactly. A man of intensely masterful character, he will brook no opposition. I am powerless to sway him. Suggestions from myself as to the conduct of the paper would infuriate him. He believes that radical changes are necessary in the policy of _Peaceful Moments_, and he will carry them through if it snows. Doubtless he would gladly consider your work if it fitted in with his ideas. A rapid-fire impression of a glove fight, a spine-shaking word picture of a railway smash, or something on those lines, would be welcomed. But--"
"I have never heard of such a thing," said Mr. Waterman indignantly.
"In this life," said Smith, shaking his head, "we must be prepared for every emergency. We must distinguish between the unusual and the impossible. It is unusual for the acting editor of a weekly paper to revolutionize its existing policy, and you have rashly ordered your life on the a.s.sumption that it is impossible. You are unprepared. The thing comes on you as a surprise. The cry goes round New York, "Comrades Asher, Waterman, Philpotts, and others have been taken unawares. They cannot cope with the situation.""
"But what is to be done?" cried Mr. Asher.
"Nothing, I fear, except to wait. It may be that when Mr. Renshaw, having dodged the bears and eluded the wildcat, returns to his post, he will decide not to continue the paper on the lines at present mapped out. He should be back in about ten weeks."
"Ten weeks!"
"Till then, the only thing to do is to wait. You may rely on me to keep a watchful eye on your interests. When your thoughts tend to take a gloomy turn say to yourselves, "All is well. Smith is keeping a watchful eye on our interests.""
"All the same, I should like to see this P. Maloney," said Mr. Asher.
"I shouldn"t," said Smith. "I speak in your best interests. P. Maloney is a man of the fiercest pa.s.sions. He cannot brook interference. If you should argue with him, there is no knowing what might not happen. He would be the first to regret any violent action, when once he had cooled off, but-- Of course, if you wish it I could arrange a meeting.
No? I think you are wise. And now, gentlemen, as I have a good deal of work to get through--
"All very disturbing to the man of culture and refinement," said Smith, as the door closed behind the last of the malcontents. "But I think that we may now consider the line clear. I see no further obstacle in our path. I fear I have made Comrade Maloney perhaps a shade unpopular with our late contributors, but these things must be. We must clench our teeth and face them manfully. He suffers in an excellent cause."
CHAPTER XVI
TWO VISITORS TO THE OFFICE
There was once an editor of a paper in the Far West who was sitting at his desk, musing pleasantly on life, when a bullet crashed through the window and imbedded itself in the wall at the back of his head. A happy smile lighted up the editor"s face. "Ah!" he said complacently, "I knew that personal column of ours would make a hit!"
What the bullet was to the Far West editor, the visit of Mr. Martin Parker to the offices of _Peaceful Moments_ was to Smith.
It occurred shortly after the publication of the second number of the new series, and was directly due to Betty"s first and only suggestion for the welfare of the paper.
If the first number of the series had not staggered humanity, it had at least caused a certain amount of comment. The warm weather had begun, and there was nothing much going on in New York. The papers were consequently free to take notice of the change in the policy of _Peaceful Moments_. Through the agency of Smith"s newspaper friends, it received some very satisfactory free advertis.e.m.e.nt, and the sudden increase in the sales enabled Smith to bear up with fort.i.tude against the numerous letters of complaint from old subscribers who did not know what was good for them. Visions of a large new public which should replace these Brooklyn and Flatbush ingrates filled his mind.
The sporting section of the paper pleased him most. The personality of Kid Brady bulked large in it. A photograph of the ambitious pugilist, looking moody and important in an att.i.tude of self-defense, filled half a page, and under the photograph was the legend, "Jimmy Garvin must meet this boy." Jimmy was the present holder of the light-weight t.i.tle.
He had won it a year before, and since then had confined himself to smoking cigars as long as walking sticks and appearing nightly in a vaudeville sketch ent.i.tled, "A Fight for Honor." His reminiscences were being published in a Sunday paper. It was this that gave Smith the idea of publishing Kid Brady"s autobiography in _Peaceful Moments_, an idea which won the Kid"s whole-hearted grat.i.tude. Like most pugilists he had a pa.s.sion for bursting into print. Print is the fighter"s accolade. It signifies that he has arrived. He was grateful to Smith, too, for not editing his contributions. Jimmy Garvin groaned under the supervision of a member of the staff of his Sunday paper, who deleted his best pa.s.sages and altered the rest into Addisonian English. The readers of _Peaceful Moments_ got their Brady raw.
"Comrade Brady," said Smith meditatively to Betty one morning, "has a singularly pure and pleasing style. It is bound to appeal powerfully to the many-headed. Listen to this. Our hero is fighting one Benson in the latter"s home town, San Francisco, and the audience is rooting hard for the native son. Here is Comrade Brady on the subject: "I looked around that house, and I seen I hadn"t a friend in it. And then the gong goes, and I says to myself how I has one friend, my old mother down in Illinois, and I goes in and mixes it, and then I seen Benson losing his goat, so I gives him a half-scissor hook, and in the next round I picks up a sleep-producer from the floor and hands it to him, and he takes the count." That is what the public wants. Crisp, lucid, and to the point. If that does not get him a fight with some eminent person, nothing will."
He leaned back in his chair.
"What we really need now," he said thoughtfully, "is a good, honest, muck-raking series. That"s the thing to put a paper on the map. The worst of it is that everything seems to have been done. Have you by any chance a second "Frenzied Finance" at the back of your mind? Or proofs that nut sundaes are composed princ.i.p.ally of ptomaine and outlying portions of the American workingman? It would be the making of us."
Now it happened that in the course of her rambles through the city Betty had lost herself one morning in the slums. The experience had impressed itself on her mind with an extraordinary vividness. Her lot had always been cast in pleasant places, and she had never before been brought into close touch with this side of life. The sight of actual raw misery had come home to her with an added force from that circ.u.mstance. Wandering on, she had reached a street which eclipsed in cheerlessness even its squalid neighbors. All the smells and noises of the East Side seemed to be penned up here in a sort of canyon. The ma.s.ses of dirty clothes hanging from the fire-escapes increased the atmosphere of depression. Groups of ragged children covered the roadway.
It was these that had stamped the scene so indelibly on her memory. She loved children, and these seemed so draggled and uncared-for.
Smith"s words gave her an idea.
"Do you know Broster Street, Mr. Smith?" she asked.
"Down on the East Side? Yes, I went there once to get a story, one red-hot night in August, when I was on the _News_. The Ice Company had been putting up their prices, and trouble was expected down there.
I was sent to cover it."
He did not add that he had spent a week"s salary that night, buying ice and distributing it among the denizens of Broster Street.
"It"s an awful place," said Betty, her eyes filling with tears. "Those poor children!"
Smith nodded.
"Some of those tenement houses are fierce," he said thoughtfully. Like Betty, he found himself with a singularly clear recollection of his one visit to Broster Street. "But you can"t do anything."
"Why not?" cried Betty. "Oh, why not? Surely you couldn"t have a better subject for your series? It"s wicked. People only want to be told about them to make them better. Why can"t we draw attention to them?"
"It"s been done already. Not about Broster Street, but about other tenements. Tenements as a subject are played out. The public isn"t interested in them. Besides, it wouldn"t be any use. You can"t tree the man who is really responsible, unless you can spend thousands scaring up evidence. The land belongs in the first place to some corporation or other. They lease it to a lessee. When there"s a fuss, they say they aren"t responsible, it"s up to the lessee. And he, bright boy, lies so low you can"t find out who it is."
"But we could try," urged Betty.
Smith looked at her curiously. The cause was plainly one that lay near to her heart. Her face was flushed and eager. He wavered, and, having wavered, he did what no practical man should do. He allowed sentiment to interfere with business. He knew that a series of articles on Broster Street would probably be so much dead weight on the paper, something to be skipped by the average reader, but he put the thought aside.
"Very well," he said. "If you care to turn in a few crisp remarks on the subject, I"ll print them."
Betty"s first instalment was ready on the following morning. It was a curious composition. A critic might have cla.s.sed it with Kid Brady"s reminiscences, for there was a complete absence of literary style. It was just a wail of pity, and a cry of indignation, straight from the heart and split up into paragraphs.
Smith read it with interest, and sent it off to the printer unaltered.
"Have another ready for next week, Comrade Brown," he said. "It"s a long shot, but this might turn out to be just what we need."
And when, two days after the publication of the number containing the article, Mr. Martin Parker called at the office, he felt that the long shot had won out.
He was holding forth on life in general to Betty shortly before the luncheon hour when Pugsy Maloney entered bearing a card.
"Martin Parker?" said Smith, taking it. "I don"t know him. We make new friends daily."
"He"s a guy wit" a tall-shaped hat," volunteered Master Maloney, "an"
he"s wearing a dude suit an" shiny shoes."
"Comrade Parker," said Smith approvingly, "has evidently not been blind to the importance of a visit to _Peaceful Moments_. He has dressed himself in his best. He has felt, rightly, that this is no occasion for the flannel suit and the old straw hat. I would not have it otherwise.
It is the right spirit. Show the guy in. We will give him audience."
Pugsy withdrew.