# The Saturday Evening Post/A Nose for News

Extracted from The Saturday Evening Post, 12 August 1922, pp. 12–13, 88–90.
For to all Beholders the fact was instantly and entirely clear that the nose was not made for the man, but that the man was made for the nose. The insignificant spider-like body of Mr. Quigley was obviously an after-thought, made of what bit of material were left over after the masterpiece of a nose was finished.
A NOSE FOR NEWS
By Richard Connell
ILLUSTRATED BY WILL FOSTER
THIS is a newspaper story the hero of which is not a cub reporter who stumbles on a big piece of news, makes a note on his cuff, and beats the town. Properly speaking the chief figure is not a person at all, but a nose. And such a nose! It was attached to Marcus Quigley, managing editor of The Morning Voice. Or, properly speaking again, Marcus Quigley was attached to it. For to all Beholders the fact was instantly and entirely clear that the nose was not made for the man, but that the man was made for the nose. The insignificant spider-like body of Mr. Quigley was obviously an after-thought, made of what bit of material were left over after the masterpiece of a nose was finished. In the city room of The Morning Voice, one corner of which was quite filled by the nose, it was commonly said that there were five wonders of the western world—the Grand Cañon, Niagara Falls, the Mississippi, the lower Manhattan sky line and Marcus Quigley's nose.
Architecturally it was impressive, a regular cathedral of a nose, of the modern school in its size and simplicity of outline, and with Gothic touches shout the nave and transept. Its bridge was a stupendous feat of nasal engineering. Geographically it was a promontory, if not actually a peninsula. It was not long or hooked or fat—but a nose of straight, incisive, vigorous lines; it suggested the first few rough strokes of a master sculptor's chisel, working in granite. And yet, for all its massiveness and apparent immobility, it was oddly sensitive. When Marcus Quigley scented a story, and grew excited therefore, the tip of his nose quivered perceptibly.
Taken merely as an ornament, this nose was remarkable enough. Hut it was no mere ornament, no mere device for smelling and breathing; it was that rare and uncanny phenomenon—a nose for news.
It was because of his nose and its genius that Marco Quigley received a salary of three hundred dollars a week from Col. Daniel Peyton Fowler, the owner of The Morning Voice. And Mr. Quigley was not overpaid. That nose made him worth many times fifteen thousand a year to his paper. He knew this of course, for a good newspaper editor knows everything; but it did not make him discontented. For he also knew that he would have done the work for a hundred a week, or twenty-five, or for nothing at all. News getting was his passion. To detect the scent of a good news story, to see its tracks along the trail of daily events, to run it to earth, to drag a from its lair, to nail its skin, properly tanned and stuffed, on the front page of The Morning Voice—that was the breath of life to Marcus Quigley; he knew no other, nor wanted to. It was in his blood; in short, he was a born newspaper man. That disease is incurable.
He could have had a plate-glass private office with a mahogany desk as big as a billiard table, but he preferred to be as close to the firing line as he could get. So he inhabited an ancient roll-top desk in a corner of the city room, and he wouldn't have traded that desk, battered though it was, charred by cigars, chipped by editorial shears, ever littered with paper and pencil stubs, for any desk in the land. It was the desk he had first had when he rose from a district reporter to managing editor; so it must have been at least twenty-five years old, for he had been at the news helm of the paper a quarter of a century. His eyebrows had become the color of cobwebs in the service of The Morning Voice: lately he had taken to wearing elastic-sided shoes; but his nose for news was as strong and as sharp as ever.
His eyes were lit by an unappeasable curiosity; they were constantly peering and flitting; he could read a column at a glance and pluck from it the salient facts. For a managing editor he was unusually mild; he was not a desk banger; he was no fire-breathing czar of the city room; he said little, and that in a low voice. Reporters liked him because he stood behind them when they were right, and did not heckle them unduly when they were wrong. From his manner one would have judged him to be a rather gentle soul, of no special endowment as to spine. And he did tolerate many things; he did not quarrel with the editorial policy of the paper, he did not row with the advertising manager or the foreman of the composing room, although to do these things is deemed a constitutional right by managing editors. On one point, however, he was as adamant, as unshakable as the Rocky Mountains: if a story was news he'd ran it. That was his creed.
He did not argue, he did not grow heated; he simply sighted his small bright eyes along his nose, looked fixedly at one and said quietly, “It's news. This is a newspaper. The story goes in.”
One knew from the way he said it that the only way to prevent the story from appearing in the paper was to murder Marcus Quigley, or fire him.
Col. Daniel Peyton Fowler had often been tempted to do both. But a man does not make seven million dollars, as Colonel Fowler had, by yielding to every passing fit of passion. He had only recently bought The Morning Voice, but he knew its history; he could remember the anemic state of its circulation and the paucity of its advertising in the distant days before Marcus Quigley became its guiding spirit. That nose of Mr. Quigley's had breathed life into the Morning Voice and made it the necessary breakfast companion of a quarter of a million people. The colonel was too shrewd a newspaper man himself not to see the asset he had in that nose. Years before, back in the little country town of his birth, Colonel Fowler had been a newspaper man himself. He was the son of a small-town editor, born, as he sometimes put it, under a printing press, but when he found that his father's estate, after forty years of toil, consisted of two fishing rods and an old panama hat, the astute colonel concluded that the position in life he craved could better be obtained in the world of finance. When he became rich, as in due course he did, he bought The Morning Voice, partly as a pet and partly because he liked to see “Col. Daniel Peyton Fowler, Editor and Publisher,” on the masthead of a big city newspaper.
Colonel Fowler had not, however, entirely reconciled himself to Marcus Quigley's nose. He was not a meek man—one seldom makes seven million dollars by being meek—nor was he weighed down by an inferiority complex. What he had he had gained by thrusting himself lustily into the fray and taking what he desired by direct and sometimes violent methods. The world was his oyster, and he was fond of oysters. Also he loved combat. He was an imperious person, the colonel, who wanted what he wanted when he wanted it—and got it. Some people said he was too impulsive, but they also admitted that his impulses were generally good.
Colonel Fowler was one of those men who do not enjoy sitting any place but at the head of the table, because it seems to them that that is where they belong. So he was chairman of the board of directors of the traction company, and of two banks, commodore of his yacht club, and head of the vestry of his church. In all his activities and interests—and they were many—he was king: a benevolent autocrat who brooked no brother near his throne; in all his fields of endeavor he was boss; in all that is, except one—his newspaper. And this state of affairs he did not greatly like.
It was true that in most departments of The Morning Voice no one dared say him nay. He might fire advertising managers by the score—and did; he might on the editorial page flay whomsoever he pleased—he might, if the fancy struck him, print the sheet on green paper with crimson ink; but when it came to a question of news he ran up against the name of Marcus Quigley.
Not that he deferred to it—for the colonel was no deferrer; indeed he fought it, almost dally, in a never-ending series of pitched battles. Ofttimes he stormed in a burly voice that made the typewriters in the city room quiver in every key, and even caused the linotype machines downstairs to drop a letter.
But all he ever got out of Marcus Quigley in reply was, “It's news, colonel. News is news. The story must go in.”
Colonel Fowler knew that the story would have to go in or Marcus Quigley would go out. He was not sure that he could afford to have that happen, yet.
The truth was that Colonel Fowler was a little jealous down within him of that nose of Marcus Quigley's. He knew its record, but he was not entirely convinced that even that nose was any better than his own. He had an idea that it might be right ninety-nine times, but that on the hundredth it would go wrong, and he had a more or less fixed intention of being on the spot when the nose came to grief.
Perhaps Earl Geppert had something to do with the fact that Colonel Fowler could never make up his mind that he had better accept the verdicts of Marcus Quigley's nose. Perhaps Earl Geppert had something to do with the sowing of tiny seeds of disgruntlement that of late had been rankling a little in the colonel's broad bosom. Earl Geppert was a clever young man, and an ambitious one; his eyes were clever, his conversation clever, his clothes clever; he exhaled an aroma of clevernesses as the lemon verbena exhales perfume. The cleverest thing he had done to date was to marry the favorite niece of Col. Daniel Peyton Fowler and attach himself to the pay roll of The Morning Voice.
Just what his position was was an office mystery; he gave the impression of being engaged in important secret work of some kind, the results of which were never apparent. It was further rumored that he was learning the business and that he was in line for a big job. It was further rumored that Marcus Quigley's verdict on Geppert, given to the colonel himself, was: “Geppert? Smart, yes. Smooth, yes. Clever, yes. Nose for news, no.”
On saying this, to the rumor ran, Marcus Quigley had pointed his own nose at the colonel for emphasis. Whatever Geppert's plans, capabilities, ambitions were, he was in and about The Morning Voice office. Also, as he was a relative, he visited the home of Colonel Fowler as frequently as possible; and also, he brought with him a budget of office gossip, and a judicious modicum of flattery—and the colonel was much too human not to enjoy both.
It is not unlikely that on these visits to the owner of The Morning Voice Geppert talked of Marcus Quigley. It is unlikely that so adroit a young man as he unquestionably was, ever said anything directly against the managing editor, but it is likely that he did mention the benefits a newspaper derives from the injection of new blood; that he did linger over the phrase “old fogies in editorial chairs”; and that he did narrate, ever so mildly and respectfully, how he had heard a reporter say that the only man who had the colonel buffaloed was a certain editor with a prominent beak.
The colonel laughed at this anecdote, but his laughter did not have a wholly merry ring. He had a feeling that he, Colonel Fowler, was not the man it was safe for anybody to buffalo.
Marcus Quigley, on the other hand, did not visit the home of his employer, nor, so far as anyone knew, any home but his own. That he had a home was for years merely a surmise. All that was certain was that when he finished his twelve-hour workday, which he did each morning at two, he tucked a fresh copy of his paper under his arm and disappeared, presumably into the suburbs, to reappear at two in the afternoon with a clean collar and with his nose for news evidently refreshed by slumber.
Eventually it was learned that he had not only a home but a family. Heber discovered this. Heber, who was one of the younger reporters, was on the late watch one night and the city room's rush had died down a bit. Marcus Quigley called Heber to his desk.
“College man, aren't you, Hebert?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What college?”
Heber told him.
“Is it a good place, Heber?”
“I think so.”
“What does it cost?”
“It cost me about a thousand a year.”
The managing editor wrote that down in his big careful hand. “Much gambling there?”
“Very little.”
“Many fast fellows?”
“A few, of course. On the whole a decent crowd.”
“Good place to send a boy, you think?”
“Yes—of course, though it depends on the type of boy.”
“The boy I have in mind,” said the managing editor, “is an only son; perhaps he's been a little spoiled. He's fairly bright but not very strong.”
“My college would be a good place for him, I think,” said Heber. Then, his reporter's curiosity getting the better of him: “Whose boy is he?”
“Mine,” said Marcus Quigley.
“Yours?” exclaimed Heber. “Why, I didn't know you had one.”
“I have,” said Marcus Quigley, and to his usually straight and serious lips came a smile. “One.”
“I hope he likes college,” said Heber.
“Thank you, Heber.” Marcus Quigley's manner had grown almost shy. “I hope so.”
Marcus Quigley did not mention his son again. It must have been years later when it occurred to Heber to inquire about him. The managing editor was usually too busy to talk of personal affairs, even if he was inclined to be communicative, which he habitually was not.
Heber caught him during one of the rare moments of inactivity, and asked, “How is that boy of yours getting on?”
The look of concentration changed to a beam of pride.
“Very well, thanks. Very well. He's a good boy.”
Heber in narrating the incident later said, “I never thought the old fellow could look so utterly human. Why, his face was actually tender!”
Later, when the war was on, the reporters noticed that one corner of Marcus Quigley's desk, usually buried beneath an avalanche of paper, was kept carefully clean, so that the editor might see a small photograph he had pasted there. It was a photograph of a young man in the uniform of an ensign in the United Stats Navy, and though his nose was by no means so prodigious as Mr. Quigley's, one could detect a certain family resemblance. The reporters noticed also that Marcus Quigley always sent for the latest war news, particularly the casualty lists, the instant he got to the office, and scanned then with swift, nervous eyes.
But he did not talk about his son. They decided that it was diffidence that kept him from doing so; so the family life of Marcus Quigley remained more or less wrapped in mystery.
There was no mystery, however, about the staff's estimate of his editorial ability. One and all they agreed—to use Heber's words—that “the old boy is a whale of a good newspaper man, who can see a yarn a mile off, knows how to get it and how to play it when he gets it.” But even the staff did not understand how utterly the getting and printing of news absorbed the small man with the huge nose. To him it was a fetish—and more: it was his religion.
Once in a great while he gave voice to what was always in his mind, and preached his gospel to a group of reporters.
“A newspaper lives to give news. If it does not give the news—all the news—fully, clearly, it is no newspaper, but a dead rag. A newspaper is really a public institution, with a sacred duty to all the people.
“News is alive. It breathes. It has personality. It's interesting. The best news is about people, living people. What makes a good story? Here are four important elements:
“Blood, action, women, big names. Get those four things in a story and any man or woman will read it.
“Develop your nose for news. Look for the story in everything. See people as characters in a drama. Is their drama a thriller? Does It grip your brain? Does it force you to watch it? If it does it's a real story.
“When an editor strikes a story like that he's got to print it, despite hell and high water. He owes that to his paper and to the people. An editor who doesn't print news when he knows it is news is the most contemptible creature in God's green world.”
He did not preach often; he was too busy. But those who heard him never forgot his words. Certainly Earl Geppert did not forget them, for he heard the managing editor's little sermon, and that evening in Colonel Fowler's library smilingly gave a more or less accurate version of it for the benefit of the colonel.
“Odd fish, old Quigley,” remarked Geppert.
“A stubborn fish,” said the colonel; he was in a not very amiable mood.
“I wonder,” mused Geppert, “if he means all that.”
“Means all what?”
“About printing a story, come what may.”
“Maybe,” grunted the colonel. “Maybe not.” The owner of The Morning Voice dropped cigar ashes on his dinner coat, swore, then said. “I've never made up my mind, Geppert, whether it is a case of high principles or just plain ornery mulishness.”
“Neither have I,” said Geppert quickly. “But some day we may find out.”
The “we” had been carefully calculated.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing as yet,” said the clever young man, “I was just thinking about the old fable, that's all.”
“What fable?”
“'It depends on whose ox to gored,'” quoted Geppert; his smile was meaningful.
“Old Mark Quigley has gored a few of my oxen,” grumbled the colonel.
“Ever gore any of his own?” queried Geppert; his smile was insinuating.
“Hasn't any to gore,” grunted the colonel. He glowered at the red tip of his cigar; a fresh sense of injury seamed to be awakened in him by Geppert's words. “Only last week,” complained the colonel, “he insisted on printing that story about the elevator falling in the Ludwlg-Pratt department store, and now old man Ludwig swears he'll never run another line of advertising in The Morning Voice.”
Mr. Geppert mads clucking sounds, indicative of horror at Marcus Quigley and condolence for Colonel Fowler.
When the clever young man rose to go he extended his hand to the colonel. “I hope you get a lot of trout on your trip to Maine,” he said.
“Thanks,” said the colonel.
“Gone long, sir?”
“No; about a week. Can't keep away from the local political situation too long these days.”
Mr. Geppert smiled.
“I understand we'll soon be calling you senator.”
Colonel Fowler laughed.
“You keep your ear close to the ground, don't you, Geppert?”
“Oh, one hears talk.”
“What have you heard?” The colonel's tone mirrored his interest.
“Well,” said Geppert. “I have heard that Big Ed Sheehan will hold a quiet meeting of the state committee next week and—well—the rumor says he favors you.”
“Oh, does he?” The colonel was elaborately casual. “Interesting if true. Well, good night, Geppert.”
As the clever young man went down the steps of the big house his smile was replaced by a look strongly suggesting irritation.
“He must think I'm thick,” he said under his breath. “As if every wise one in town didn't know he'd spend his shirt to be senator, and has been moving heaven and earth to get Big Ed Sheehan to indorse him.”
Then Mr. Geppert's clever countenance brightened
“It will be a fine thing for me,” he remarked to himself, “if the colonel has to go to Washington. It will keep him busy down there—and meantime I'll be busy here.”
Three nights later Earl Geppert came into the city room of The Morning Voice and meandered, apparently aimlessly, past the desk of Marcus Quigley. The managing editor had gone to the ice-water cooler, his only exercise, and the nimble eye of the clever young man roved rapidly over the editorial desk. The eye was stopped abruptly by a headline written in the big careful hand of the managing editor; Marcus Quigley often wrote headlines for the more important stories; indeed, he did everything he could, and he would have set the type by hand had the necessity arisen. The headline read:
Big Ed Sheehan Named In Bribery Case
political boss indicted by grand jury
Geppert read no farther; he wheeled away from the desk like a circling sea gull and did not return until Marcus Quigley had resumed his seat. Then he approached the owner of the celebrated nose.
“Good evening.”
“Good evening, Geppert.”
“Heard from the colonel?”
“No. Why should I?”
“Oh, I thought he might have wired about that Sheehan story.”
“He hasn't.”
“What is there in that story, Quigley? One of those wild political things, isn't it?”
Marcus Quigley looked at the clever young man guizzically.
“No, it is not wild,” he said slowly. “We have the facts. Big Ed has been caught with the goods at last. I had the hunch and Millett dug up the details.”
“You're not going to run it, of course,” remarked Geppert.
The editor peered along his nose at the young man.
“Of course I am,” he said.
“It may be libel,” warned Geppert.
“The truth is not libel,” said Marcus Quigley.
“But, see here, you can't run that story.”
“I'm going to.”
“You know what it means?”
“It means that a crooked boss has been caught doing a crooked thing.”
“Oh, I'm not thinking about Big Ed. I'm thinking about the colonel.”
“What about the colonel?”
“Now, Quigley, you know the situation as well as I do. If The Morning Voice runs that story Big Ed Sheehan will knife the colonel politically.”
Marcus Quigley looked grave.
“But it's news, Geppert,” he said.
“Not another paper in town will touch it.”
“It's news, nevertheless,” the editor repeated doggedly.
“But the colonel wants to be senator.”
“It's news,” repeated Marcus Quigley.
The younger man's temper began to escape from his control.
“News!” he exclaimed. “News! Man alive, don't you ever think of anything but news?”
To the thin lips in the shadow of the great nose came a smile.
“I don't believe I do, Geppert. That's why I'm here.”
Geppert was thinking of what it would mean to him to have the colonel busy in Washington; his clever face was contorted as he snapped, “Yes; you're here—now. But where will you be when the colonel sees that story in his paper?”
“That has nothing to do with the news value of the story, Geppert.”
The calmness of the editor appeared to infuriate the man who faced him.
“Let me tell you something, Quigley. You may not know it. You think because you've been here so long you own this sheet. You think the colonel considers you indispensable. Well, you're dead wrong. I happen to know that he's stood about as much from you as he's going to. He'll be glad of this chance to get rid of you.”
Marcus Quigley studied the words he had written; he shrugged his slight bent shoulders; then he looked up at Geppert and said, “I've fought for twenty-five years to make this a real newspaper that gives real news. If Colonel Fowler wants to make a rag of it I suppose that's up to him.”
“Then you're going to run that story?”
“It's news.”
Geppert's anger came boiling to the surface again.
“You and your infernal yapping about news!” he cried. “It's easy for you to sit and get off that stuff when you know the news is going to hurt someone else, not you. I suppose you've got coin tucked away, in case you lose your job. You've nothing at stake. You know you'll never break into the news with an ugly story yourself. Yes, it's easy to another man's ox gored.”
Marcus Quigley turned from the angry man and bent over a bunch of copy that had just come from the copy desk.
“I haven't time to discuss that with you now, Geppert,” he said evenly. “The Sheehan story is news. It goes in. Good night.”
For a second one might have thought from his face that the clever young man was going to assault the owner of the nose. Then suddenly a smile came to Geppert's face, such a smile as heralds impending triumph, a satisfied smile. He went out of the office, but he did not go home. He waited at the Press Club until after two, then stole back to the press room of The Morning Voice, secured a first edition of the paper, and mailed it, special delivery, to Col. Daniel Peyton Fowler, at his fishing camp in Maine. With the soft black pencil dear to reporters he wrote across the top of the first page:
{{block center|style=font-style:italic|{{fine block|Dear Colonel: Another ox gored. I warned him not to do it too. Geppert.
Then, still smiling a satisfied smile, the clever young man went home to bed.
When Colonel Fowler read the Sheehan story, and the penciled note, his face became the color of a Venetian sunset; it was still that color when he reached The Morning Voice office some hours later. He demanded loudly to see the managing editor. But a most unusual thing had happened that day. Although it was well past two Marcus Quigley was not at his desk. The colonel was forced to nurse his wrath in his own private office, and to him presently came Earl Geppert, who verbally expressed surprise at finding him there, but whose face showed no surprise whatsoever.
“Just when the trout were beginning to strike too,” growled the colonel. “Where's Quigley.
“Isn't he in?” Again Geppert's tongue expressed surprise.
“No.” The colonel was fuming “No. I wish he was——”
“Perhaps,” suggested Geppert, “perhaps he thought it wiser not to be.”
“Humph!” exploded the owner of the paper. “It's just as well for him. He'll gore no more of my oxen.”
“I was afraid you'd be angry,” said Geppert sweetly. “I told him so. But he just droned 'It's news.'”
“I'll have a piece of news for him that will make his nose tremble,” muttered the colonel. He consulted his watch. “Humph! After five. I can't wait. Got a vestry meeting. But I'll attend to Mr. Quigley tomorrow.”
Geppert accompanied him to the elevator, talking softly into the colonel's gnarled ear.
“Humph!” remarked the colonel as he strode along. “You're right, Geppert. Quigley's a fraud. Funny I didn't see it that way before. Of course he can afford to sit here and gore other men's oxen. And I'd been thinking it was pluck! Bah! And I thought it was a case of a man having the courage of his convictions. Bah! Tomorrow——”
The descending elevator took the rest of the colonel's sentence with it. Geppert whistled a pleased waltz as he went back to his office. An hour later, when he went out to dinner, Geppert noted that Marcus Quigley had come in; and he also noted that the managing editor was not busily poring over the assignment schedule, as was his wont, but was sitting, oblivious of the din of the city room, staring out of the window at the blank brick wall of the building opposite.
Geppert did not return to the office that night. He wanted to be rested, for it seemed to him the clever thing to do to be on hand, fresh and smiling, next day when the colonel named a new managing editor.
It was an even more feverish night than usual in the city room. But toward midnight it quieted down. The reporters of the late watch talked together in a corner. Their voices buzzed like bluebottle flies.
“The old nose is drooping tonight,” remarked one.
“Never saw him look so all in before,” said a second.
“He was white and trembling when I reported to him,” a third said. “Drink?”
“No; he doesn't touch it. Nerves, probably. No wonder, the pace he travels. He must be sixty, too. Fine old war horse.”
“Why, look. There's Steve Farrell. Wonder what brings him into the shop this late.”
They saw the solemn dumpy figure of Farrell, the veteran police-headquarters reporter, approach the managing editor's desk. Farrell was the dean of the staff, the only one who called the editor Mark, and on more than one occasion, they knew, the managing editor had saved Farrell's job for him. Ordinarily Farrell telephoned his stories in to a rewrite man. They saw Farrell bend over Marcus Quigley's desk.
They could not hear him when he whispered huskily, “Mark, old man, it's tough, damn tough——”
“Yes, Steve.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Thanks, Steve.”
The editor kept his eyes fastened on the papers on his desk, but they were not focused en anything in particular.
“It hit me pretty hard, Steve.” The editor's face was set. “The boy was all I had in the world, you know. I'd planned big things for him, Steve.”
“Yes—I know. It's tough, Mark; tough on you.”
The police-headquarters man glanced about; he whispered in an even lower voice than before, “I've got it fixed.”
“Fixed?”
“Yes—look—here's the bulletin. The chief inspector gave it to me after I'd pleaded with him an hour. No one else has seen it. Not a word need ever get into print. Your son's case is closed, Mark.”
“Old man”—the editor's voice broke—“you're a real friend. Let's see the bulletin.”
Farrell laid on the desk a sheet of paper—the bulletin that is posted in police headquarters to inform reporters of the latest police news. Marcus Quigley bent over it. It read:
    Detectives Malone and Stack report that the mystery of the theft of $49,000 in bonds from the City Trust Company has been solved. The theft was traced to Marcus Quigley, Jr., aged 25, of 1770 Linwood Avenue, Vernontown, an employe of the bank. When they went to arrest him at his father's house today he admitted the theft. He asked to be allowed to shave before he was taken to jail, and went into the bathroom, where he cut his throat. Despite the efforts of the detectives, and his father, who is Marcus Quigley, managing editor of The Morning Voice, to save him, the wound was fatal. The detectives say that young Quigley stole the money to give it to Mrs. Estelle Callaway, of 111 Park Avenue, widow of J. Sears Callaway, and well known in society. The detectives say that she lost heavily gambling for high stakes, and that she infatuated Quigley, who stole to help her recoup her losses. A number of men and women prominent in a certain high social set are named by the detectives as having taken part in the gambling. She lost the money Quigley gave her and refused to see him again. It is announced by the bank that Quigley's father has made good the stolen money.
The editor's ashen lips formed each word slowly, painfully, as if he were just learning to read.
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “The facts are straight. But I do think it would be fair to mention in the story that the boy had a clean record, that he'd always been a good boy.”
“Story?”
“It is a good story, Steve.”
“Great heavens, Mark; you don't mean you're going to run it!”
The editor looked up from the bulletin; his face was the color of the copy paper.
“It's news, Steve,” he said.
“But you could kill it.”
“Kill news, Steve?”
“Come, buck up, Mark! You don't know what you're doing. This story is about your boy, about you, understand? It's fixed, I tell you. You can kill it. No one but you and I and the cops know.”
The fingers of Marcus Quigley were bloodless as he gripped his thick paper pencil.
“Yes, Steve—I know. But it is news.”
Farrell laid his hand on the editor's antennalike arm.
“Don't be a fool!” he whispered hoarsely. “To print it will cost you your job, sure. You know how the colonel feels about scandal; he fired Britt after that divorce mix-up; you know that. And you know how that rat Geppert will make use of this. Can't you hear him slipping it to the colonel 'Your managing editor had a thief for a son'? You're in bad, right now, about that Sheehan story, I'll bet all I ever saw, aren't you?”
“I don't know, Steve. Probably.”
“Got any coin?”
“No; every cent I owned went to the bank today.”
“Well, think it over. You know what it is to be sixty, broke and jobless.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You're the one this story will hurt.”
“Yes, I know. The boy is beyond hurting now.”
“You'll kill the story then?”
“Don't crowd me, Steve. My head aches. Give me a minute or two. I've got to think this thing out. You'd better go home. Good night, old man; I'm never going to forget what you did for me.”
“Good night, Mark.”
When he had gone the managing editor sat rigid in his chair, staring out through the almost deserted city room, the room where he had passed the best years of his life. He saw the rows of typewriters and thought of the countless stories that had been pounded out on their lopsided keys; he thought of the stories that would be written on them. He saw the copy desk, with the slot in the center, and the copy readers, industrious as ants, their eyeshades pulled down over their eyes, their fountain pens in action. He heard their shouts of “Boy! Oh, boy!” Upstairs he could hear, ever so faintly, the click and tick and whir of the linotype machines, turning copy into leaden words to be spread on newsprint for men to read,
Soon, he reflected, he would hear the thunderous chorus of the great presses as they printed the thousands of fresh copies of The Morning Voice, his newspaper, the paper he made with his hands, his brain, his heart. His whole life was bound up in that scene. The smell of the city room was in his nostrils, that pungent blend of ink, fresh paper, tobacco smoke. He loved it all.
His long fingers closed on the police bulletin and tightened on the sheet of paper that meant to him disgrace, and the loss of everything he valued. He had felt that he could weather the Sheehan storm, but this scandal, coming on top of it, would mean his banishment; he knew that. The cords on his knuckle stood out as he gripped the crumpled paper.
“Sixty, broke and jobless,” he muttered “And alone!” He pressed his temples with his fingers. And then: “But this is news.”
His bent shoulders straightened and squared; he stood up.
“Creelman,” he snouted, “please come here.”
A rewrite man hurried from his typewriter.
“Creelman,” he said in his usual voice, “here's a good story. Go the limit. Front page stuff. Don't ask any questions. You've just time to make the first edition.”
A second later he shouted, “Boy! Here, quick! Jump up to the composing room and tell them to put the shipwreck story inside and save a column on the front page for the—for the Quigley story. Hurry!”
He drew toward him a clean sheet of copy paper, and in his big careful hand wrote:
Editor's Son Kills Self To Escape Arrest
Marcus Quigley Jr. Stole $49,000 to Aid Woman and Ended Life When Cornered
Then he slumped over on his desk and buried his face in his folded arms.
The next afternoon Marcus Quigley went to the office of The Morning Voice, as he had gone six afternoons a week for twenty-five years; he went almost automatically, hardly knowing what he was doing. He had barely seated himself at his venerable desk when an office boy told him that Colonel Fowler had left word for him to report to the colonel the instant he came in. He went slowly, walking as if his legs were weak from a long illness; he did not look up at the colonel, whose bulk overflowed a swivel chair behind a broad flat desk; he shuffled up to the desk and laid on it a sheet of copy paper on which he had written in his big hand: “Please accept my resignation, to take effect today. Marcus Quigley.”
He knew that he would not be able to say the words, so he had written them. Before the owner of The Morning Voice could speak Marcus Quigley pushed the piece of paper toward him with his long fingers; then he turned and started to shuffle from the room.
A roar such as an angered lion emits stopped him in his tracks.
“Here, Quigley! What the devil is this?” The words came bellowing up from the colonel's barrel of chest.
“My—resignation,” said Marcus Quigley.
He saw the burly pink fingers of the colonel close on the sheet of paper, saw them tear it twice across with swift fingers, saw him make a ball of the pieces and hurl the ball indignantly into a wastebasket.
“Bah!” said the colonel very loudly. “Bah! Do you think I don't read my own paper? Do you think my newspaper blood has turned to toilet water? Do you think I don't know a man with guts when I see one? Bah, Mark Quigley! You take that nose of yours back to the place in the city room where it belongs.”
The colonel coughed.
“And, oh,” he added, “one other thing. I'm taking Geppert away from The Morning Voice. He doesn't seem to have a nose for news.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1949, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 75 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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