# Ainslee's Magazine/Genius Incognito!

Extracted from Ainslee's magazine, April 1917, pp. 80–92. Title illustrations omitted.
Genius Incognito
By Gordon Young
CUB reporters are so proverbially successful in pulling in scoops that some people have often wondered why newspapers don’t depend entirely on them. According to every fictionist who undertakes to spin a hero out of a cub, the youngster lands the goods where veterans tried and true have fallen down—and always gets his salary raised. Obviously a cub that doesn’t make good is uninteresting. The one that does is usually a nature fake. But, nevertheless, here goes!
“What’s your name?” demanded the rotund city editor of the Morning Mail, blinking his eyes at the tall, not so very confident young man who stood outside the railing and gazed wistfully across at the editor’s desk.
A moment’s hesitation followed. The young man seemed unable to recall just what his name was.
The city editor of the Morning Mail never swore under his breath.
“Oh, why—Charles Newton,” the young man stammered hastily, somewhat impressed by the nature and emphasis of the editor’s remarks.
“Newton, huh? Where’ve you worked?”
“Oh, lots of places.”
Again the remark from the fat editor was decidedly audible.
“I mean in several cities,” the young man added nervously.
“What papers?” the editor snapped.
Newton mentioned two or three.
The city editor—sometimes known as “Blustering” Brisco—eyed him incredulously, but for some reason, which he did not take the trouble to analyze, he liked the young man. Perhaps it was because he was confident that the youthful applicant was lying to him. Brisco always said that a man without resource wasn’t worth a damn in the newspaper game, and that only mollycoddles begged for a job.
“All right,” he growled. “Here’s an assignment, Get out on it. Woman shot—that’s all I know. There’s the address, and I want pictures, name of man in the case, name of the other woman, and complete details. The Mail’s a glutton for details. Get ’em.” With that he turned to the copy before him.
Newton stood looking helplessly at the assignment slip. At the bottom was printed, in small “caps”: “Bring back the goods—not reasons why you can’t.” There was also an address, but he knew nothing of the city, having been in it than an hour. There was something about a story and details but——
“In the name of——” Brisco only gasped. “You here yet! I thought I told you to get out on that story.”
Newton stammered. He came near to saying something that would have proved disastrous to his chances of hitting the trail that leads to a Brisbane job, when an inspiration came.
“Nothing has been settled about salary. How much do I get?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“Salary—how much?”
It was said by men in a position to know something of the matter that Brisco would never pay a new man more than he would possibly work for, and never pay less than could possibly be squeezed out of the pay roll when the man made good. He looked Newton over carefully and snapped:
“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen what?”
Newton was actually bewildered. He was expecting a salary—not a spending allowance.
“Dollars—each week. Good-by.”
Brisco turned to his desk with a grunt of finality. Newton started for the door, looking enviously at the reporters in the local room merrily banging their typewriters.
As he stepped out of the elevator, a young man brushed hurriedly past him and entered the cage. Newton heard him give the floor on which were the editorial offices, and another inspiration popped up like a life-saver. As the elevator started up, he called:
“Hey, wait a minute! Come back!”
The lever was reversed and the elevator descended.
“Come here a minute, will you please?” Newton questioned, pointing to the young man.
“Who?” the other asked doubtfully.
“You.”
The stranger stepped out impatiently.
“I thought you might be a reporter. Are you?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Come over here a minute where nobody can hear us. I want to tell you something.”
Every reporter is bored and rebored by people who “want to tell him something.” Clyde Kenyon was not interested.
“Listen,” Newton began. “I’m a reporter, too. Just started about five minutes ago. Never saw the inside of a newspaper office before. And now I have something that animated sugar barrel who sits inside the railing calls an ‘assignment.’ He said he didn’t know anything about it himself, but he seems to have a fair imagination. Put me wise to what I’m to do, will you? I don’t suppose I’ll last long, but I’m not going to quit now.”
Kenyon looked at him critically, carefully taking the measurements of the self-confessed cub. The measurements, as Kenyon saw them, were above the average. Newton was slender, a decided blond, with clear blue eyes and features rather delicate for a man. His manner was the exquisite, half-lazy, half-insolent, but not offensive manner of the born patrician. The lips were thin and had a way of tightening, as expressive as clenched jaws, heralding a sort of indomitable stubbornness that may make a man a hero or an ass.
“Running a bluff?” Kenyon asked.
“Call it what you like. I went after a job and unexpectedly got it. I haven’t the faintest idea about this newspaper work. Did fairly well writing blank verse at college. Most newspaper stories sound like that for the first paragraph. Here’s my assignment.”
“Whenever there’s a murder or a suicide, real or attempted, Brisco always insists on knowing the ‘other man and woman in the case’ and says you fell down on the story if there isn’t any other man or woman. I don’t see how you put it over on him.”
“I’ve never told a great many lies, and I hated to tell that one to him. I thought it was going to be wasted. But, you see, I had a hunch that if I told him I was any greener than I looked, he wouldn’t stand for me.”
“Say,” Kenyon decided, “I'll just give you a hand with this. I’ve nothing important on. Come on.”
An investigation showed that the story did not amount to much. Some woman had failed in committing suicide and, though they didn’t know it, Brisco had already had the Mail's police reporter cover the story before he had sent Newton out.
“Write it in your worst style, so he won’t be suspicious,” Newton suggested as he stood beside the type-writer, while Kenyon was turning out the story for Brisco’s desk.
When it was finished, they went out to dinner, and Newton made a confession of his circumstances:
“I haven't been out of college long, and I don’t know the first principles about anything. I’ve a little money to carry me along until I get a living wage. I'd like to make good.”
As a matter of fact, his funds consisted principally of articles negotiable at the pawnshop, for of ready cash he had but little.
“And,” Newton continued, “I was reading a newspaper on the train when I decided that since I had to do something, I would like to be a reporter. Soon as I landed in the town, I made a rush for the Mail office. At first I intended to tell the truth, but one look at that fellow’s face warned me that I’d better not. Do you think my bluff’ll work?”
“With plenty of prayer and a lot of digging, you may hang on.”
At that same hour, Brisco was growling across the desk of the managing editor:
“I put a cub on to-day. First one in ten years. He had the nerve to tell me he’d worked on a string o’ papers, and I thought he might be worth savin’. Then I sent him out on a story and he got Kenyon to write it—could tell by the style. A cub with that much gall, resourcefulness, and impudence, ought to make a first-class newspaper man in a half dozen years or so.”
II.
One day Newton caught sight of Belle van Buskirk, as she passed through the local room, and he inquired as to her identity from Kenyon.
“Superintendent of the distillery department.”
Newton wrinkled his forehead. The title was a new one to him.
“Talking of a moonshine outfit or something pertaining to a newspaper office?”
“She’s queen o’ the sob sisters, the make-’em-cry artists. She’d make anybody cry that read her rubbish. Makes me cry every time I think of the good space she wastes.”
Newton rather eagerly interposed a comment. Kenyon came back at him:
“Good looking? Well, I guess I know that! But say—talk about haughty! The Queen of Sheba was a jolly good fellow alongside of her. She’s some distant maiden, an iceberg in skirts, and doesn’t like anybody around here but the pay clerk, and him only on Tuesday mornings for about two minutes. Oh, yes—and maybe Brisco. She’s sort of a favorite of his.”
That night Belle remarked to her sister, who had certain well-defined ambitions in the theatrical line, as they sat at dinner:
“There’s a new fellow in the office—a reporter. Haven’t been very close to him yet, but from a distance he looks like a gentleman.”
It was a standing joke between the sisters that Belle was to marry a “rich man.” Therefore Stella inquired, with a rising inflection to heighten the sarcasm:
“Is he rich?”
“Didn’t I say he was a newspaper man?”
“Oh, I beg your pardon. I understood you to say that he looked like a gentleman.”
Belle sat upright and laid down her napkin. Her eyes grew bright.
“If we begin making remarks about gentlemen and such things, I should like to cogitate on a few dissipated Thespians who draw real money for putting on heavy disguises and parading on the stage a short time each evening in the rôle of gentlemen. People actually pay money to see them do it, because it’s so remarkable that they can even imperfectly play a part so foreign to their real natures.”
Stella, who was known to admire Jack Whitney, manager and leading man of the stock company with which she had cast her fortune, while anxious to reply, knew herself to be no match for her sister. She acknowledged defeat by devoting herself ostentatiously to her dinner.
Belle had a remarkable command of language and considerable energy. While she frequently indulged in sarcasm in speaking of her profession—as all “lady” journalists do at times—other people did so in her presence at their peril. Which is the attitude universally preserved by both “lady” and “gentlemen” journalists.
III.
A few evenings later, Brisco notified Belle that she was to take a night trip through the tenement district to look for features. He also said that he would have one of the reporters go with her as an escort. Brisco was more of a gentleman than he looked or sometimes acted. Newton was selected, principally because he was worthless as a news getter and could be an escort as well as the brightest star.
When the fact of his selection was made known to him, he had just time enough to recall that he had one dollar and thirty-five cents in his pocket, and to realize that he was going to spend the evening as the companion of a girl, and a very pretty girl, at that. The difference between an “assignment” and a pleasure trip was not clear to him because, to reiterate, Belle van Buskirk was a remarkably pretty girl.
He was biting his lip and cudgeling his brain as she stood some ten feet away receiving her final instructions from Brisco. He had never felt so humiliated in his life. He felt truly desperate at thus being poverty-stricken when going out with the only woman he had seen for months whom he was more than normally particular about knowing.
“I’m ready,” Belle remarked, to bring him out of his discomforting meditation.
There had been no introduction. Brisco had forgotten that.
Both were silent until they reached the street. Then Newton said:
“If you will pardon me”—and both laughed—“I will introduce myself. My name is Charles Newton.”
“And I,” she responded merrily, “am Belle van Buskirk, sob sister to Vox Populi.”
Newton was trying his best to think of two things at once. One of them was Kenyon’s remark that she was an “iceberg in skirts,” which her action and smile belied; the other was more serious and had to do with some method of improving his financial condition. He was certain that they could not walk to the tenement district, some four miles away, and equally certain that he would not take on a street car any woman for whom he was acting as escort. He was also ignorant of how to get a taxi charged to the paper. But he was a chap who had no hesitancy in getting into complicated situations, with a sublime faith that his luck or his resourcefulness would get him out.
Cæsar won an empire by plunging into a river of cold water, and Newton showed himself to be almost as daring by hailing a taxi. His fingers closed tightly about the one dollar and thirty-five cents as the door closed on them. Belle was surprised at the introduction of the taxi, but she gave no indication of it, thinking that more than likely Brisco had told him to get it.
“If you don’t object,” he began, tugging at his collar in a vain effort to relieve the choking feeling, “I’d like to go to——” He stuttered, and finally gave a street number not far away, which chanced to be that of a pawnshop which he had visited on several previous occasions. The chauffeur was informed and drove away, the taximeter ticking viciously the while.
“To tell you the truth,” Newton began, “I promised to take a trinket down here for a friend of mine. I almost forgot it. You understand?”
She smiled and acknowledged the necessary wisdom.
In the pawnshop, he slipped a ring from his finger and passed it across to the pawnbroker. The result was satisfactory to both parties. When Newton again took his place by the girl’s side, and the machine started up, he could not even hear the taximeter.
She, being a woman and trained to observation, and, as all women are, quick to notice bits of jewelry, saw that the beautiful ring she had admired was gone. She turned her face away. Tears stood in her eyes, and there was a smile on her lips. She did not know whether to be angry or pleased. As a compromise, she was agreeable.
IV.
The next morning Belle sat moodily tearing peepholes into the veil of the future with her cards. She was less interested than usual in her favorite pastime, even though it was revealed that the man she was to marry not only lacked “diamonds,” but had a great quantity of “spades’—symbolic of much work and hard luck. She was going through the cards mechanically and did not notice. Her thoughts had reverted to the night before when she had sat in a taxi with an agreeable and handsome young man and had motored through the grim depths of the city’s dirtiest streets, streets walled on either side by the bleak fronts of tenements.
The arms of her sister, who had come quickly and quietly into the room, were slipped about her neck.
“Belle dear,” Stella whispered eagerly, “oh, I’ve the biggest secret on earth to tell you! I haven’t even told mother yet—and I’m almost afraid to tell her. But you are a wise little girlie and you'll understand.”
“What is it, Nubsey?” “Nubsey” was the name of endearment Belle used when she felt ashamed for the bitter things she had said to Stella.
“Jack told me last night that he loved me and—and—and—wants me to marry him!”
Belle flung her cards away, twisted herself around, and looked straight into her sister’s face.
“Right out, point-blank, without any strings tied to it?’
“In so many words, and he said”—Stella was talking rapidly, for she had much to tell and only a half dozen hours of time—“that he knew it was a surprise to me—that he knew he had never shown that he cared for me—that he didn’t know what I would think about it—but And then I said——”
“Yes? What?” Belle questioned encouragingly.
“Of course I told him I was surprised—that I had never dreamed of such a thing—but—I would think it over and let him know——”
“Oh, Nubsey!”
The two sisters came together in a long, tight, loving embrace.
Jack Whitney was a man, not so young as some girls might have wished if they had intended marrying him, but good looking and on the square with every one of the Ten Commandments.
“Lucky girl,” Belle commented, when they had regained breath, and she looked proudly at her sister.
“And you can bet I never let him know that all of these many months I’ve been simply crazy about him. And, Belle, you know I thought he was in love with that silly little brunette. Of course, I should have known Jack would have better taste. But when a man’s in love, you can never tell how badly his eyesight is affected. Now, a woman is sensible. There must be something to the man she likes. Take yourself, for instance. You would never marry a man who was not ideal in every way. He must be good looking, have good manners, a good income, and——”
“Yes—he must be good looking and have good manners,” Belle answered abstractly. “And, Nubsey,” she added, with strained gayety, “when that time comes, I’ll be glad to leave the jaundiced sheet that keeps me from being a beggar and to join the labor union of marriage. But it depends on the man.”
It was on this same morning that Newton surveyed his cheap room from the lofty heights of his trunk.
“Perhaps some day I may enjoy this. They say distance lends enchantment. If I ever go to China, this old catacomb may look good to me. But I'd have to be a long ways off to appreciate the beauties of these scarred walls and this pock-marked carpet. Ug-h-h!”
From his pocket, he took a handful of money and mused on the potentialities.
“To move or not to move—that’s the question. To hie me to a room where I’m not ashamed to let the mirror stand unveiled, or to bear the ignominies of honest poverty and have cash on hand. To live within my income or take a chance.”
He thought of the bright eyes, the merry laugh, of the girl who had ridden beside him, and concluded that it would be best to save the money for whatever situation might arise. Perhaps he would need another taxi, or maybe a dinner with flowers. Who could tell?
V.
Several weeks passed, and then Kenyon and Newton came near to having gleeful convulsions when Brisco gave Newton a small raise, for that, to them, was conclusive evidence that they had “put one over on the old man.”
The passing weeks had also brought Belle and Newton together many times. He had called, had taken her to see her sister play, and two or three times had gone out to dinner with her and her mother, for the mother was cautious and Belle was discretion personified.
Brisco made a practice of taking long chances on stories from time to time when he got a tip, or, rather, the rumor of a tip. On such occasions, he would give a reporter an assignment with no more information than was included in the tip and tell him to bring back the dope. If one reporter didn’t get it, another would be tried, and so on until the story “broke or blew up.” It was rarely that the tip assayed pure news, but when it did, it was worth a year’s labor.
Now Brisco had received a tip that Harry Rockenheimer, son of Rockenheimer—there was but one—was in the city incognito, stopping with friends who were concealing him from his father’s detectives. Brisco had received the tip—and be it said that a tip is something that comes into a newspaper office from out of the nowhere, is always respected, and is sometimes accurate—that young Rockenheimer, who had something of a reputation for getting into trouble, had had difficulties with his father and had disappeared. There were numerous editors confident that this was true and that detectives were looking for the young man, but no paper dared risk publishing the story on the unreliable facts at hand.
Brisco had known of the tip for some time—long enough to have tried out several of the best men on it with disappointing results. They had gone to all of the sources that could be tapped and had learned only enough to make them more excited. The report seemed to be true. It was a big story, a very big story; Rockenheimer’s millions made it that.
When a story hangs fire in a newspaper office, the nerves of the editors and the men get worn; they live with the sword of Damocles overhead; they dream of seeing the scoop in the opposition paper, and rush for every new edition to make sure that it is not there. Brisco, who was almost always grouchy and, when not feeling so, simulated a grouch so as to appear natural, was more so than usual one afternoon when Newton stepped in.
“Here!” Brisco called. “Go out and interview Harry Rockenheimer.”
Newton stood still, staring at him in amazement.
“Don’t pose for a picture! Get out and interview Harry Rockenheimer—son of Old Man Rockenheimer!”
“Why—well—yes—but——” Newton stammered, wholly bewildered.
“Quit chewing your words! Go interview Rockenheimer!”
In sheer desperation, Brisco was playing the cub to win without the least hope of his doing so.
Recovering himself, and with an effort to appear nonchalant, Newton said:
“Certainly. Where did you say I would find him?”
“I didn’t say. You know as much about it as I do. Get the interview and,” he added with disconcerting positiveness, “I want a good interview.”
“What sort?” Newton asked boldly.
“What sort of a blankety-blank interview do I always want? Details, details, details—everything! Never let an interview escape any possible question that can be asked! Drain the victim of answers! Now get out and,” he added menacingly, “don’t come back here with a smile on your face unless you get it. Understand?”
Brisco never gave Newton a second thought after he was out of sight; he no more expected the interview than he expected to praise everybody on the staff on the morrow—and Gabriel’s trump might as well have been anticipated as such an event.
VI.
Newton walked aimlessly down the street.
“Interview Harry Rockenheimer!” he muttered. A wholesome awe for Brisco and Brisco’s orders, as well as his peculiar way of doing things, had been instilled into Newton. “Just the same, I think it would have been more decent of him to have had some one else do it. But I suppose it’ll have to be done.”
More meditation brought out the reflection:
“I wonder if he really knows where Rockenheimer is. It’d be just like him to play a trick like that.”
Newton didn’t show himself particularly energetic in carrying out his orders. He stood on a corner and scratched his head, then had his shoes shined, smoked a cigarette, visited a saloon, and finally strolled thoughtfully through the lobby of the leading hotel. At last he decided what to do.
“I never put a good story over on this paper—and I’d like to put just one across. I’ll do it, too! It may be my last, but I’ll do it—s’help me Billikens!”
He bought a tablet, returned to his room, and sat down, poising his pencil for some time before he started. Then he began writing the interview with Harry Rockenheimer.
It was an interview such as Brisco delighted in—only Brisco insisted that at least two persons be present when an interview was taking place. It told everything that there could possibly have been to tell. None too much credit was given young Rockenheimer, who represented that he had broken off negotiations, financial and diplomatic, with his father because the latter wanted him to marry a “snub-nosed nubbin from the cornstalk of European royalty, who had a string of titles longer than the Atlantic cable and harder to pronounce than the roll call of a Japanese regiment.”
Newton had a fair command of adjectives and more than a passing acquaintance with slang, and he was not in the least particular about the expressions he put into young Rockenheimer’s mouth. In fact, Mr. Rockenheimer went on to say that he did not care what his father thought about the matter, that he was man enough to paddle his own canoe, and that as far as maidens were concerned, if he ever did marry, it would be an American girl. Then, in reply to an inquiry as to what type of girl he thought most lovely, Mr. Rockenheimer proceeded to give an accurate and detailed description of the star woman reporter of the Morning Mail.
As a matter of fact, the interview came near complying to the last iota with all the demands that Brisco had imposed. Some details were lacking, of course, but Newton had done his best. It was a long interview, and, if adorned with the hall mark of authenticity, it would have been prized in any newspaper office between the two oceans.
When he had finished writing, Newton drew a mental picture of himself handing it in. He pictured the manner in which he would shrivel up before the questioning glances and the blasting sarcasm of the volcanic Brisco and decided that it would be best not to run chances. It took more temerity to lay it on Brisco’s desk than to write it—notwithstanding the solacing thought that he had for once “put it over on him.” He wrote a note, called a messenger, and sent note and interview to the editorial office.
He remembered that it was Belle’s evening off, and telephoned to ask her if he could call. He could.
VII.
Brisco glared at the messenger and jerked open the note addressed to him. As he read, his eyes widened and the scowl disappeared. The note said:
   Mr. Brisco.
   Sir: In accordance with instructions, and thanks to the courtesy of Mr. Rockenheimer, I have secured the interview. He has invited me to spend the evening with him, and not knowing but that I may find something more that will be of advantage to the paper, I have accepted. Respectfully,
   Charles Newton.
“Newton, old boy, my hunch was right when I took you on!” Brisco exclaimed to himself. “It looks like a double in your pay check,” and reading almost a page at a glance, he raced through the interview.
But at the end, he delivered himself of a lengthy opinion on the blankety-blank fool who would get an interview of such importance and not give the least clew as to where Rockenheimer was stopping, had stopped, or was to stop.
“Here all the detectives in Christendom are on the search. The Mail finds him, and never a mention of where he is! And the green lunatic wrote it on this atrocious ruled tablet paper and on both sides of each sheet—the blankety-blank cub!”
He called Kenyon.
“Have you any idea where Newton is to be found?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, go find him. He’s got the Rockenheimer interview—he’s with Rockenheimer now. I want to know where Rockenheimer is staying and has been staying. Get it. It’s the biggest story since Noah built the ark. Go find Newton! Don’t stand there listening to me!”
Kenyon went out.
VIII.
“Miss van Buskirk,” Newton asked, when the mother had retired for the evening, “just how serious an offense is faking?”
She looked at him and was surprised to see that he appeared to be in earnest. It was a silly question for a newspaper man to ask.
“I may as well confess,” he went on, noticing the expression on her face, “that I’m only a greenhorn—a cub, as you call it. I never saw the inside of a newspaper office until the day I went to work for the Mail. I’ve heard something about faking—its not being right and all that—but just how serious is the offense?”
“Well,” she laughed, “it’s the old story—it all depends on whether or not you are caught.”
“This afternoon I was sent out on an impossible sort of an interview. I sent it into the office and came to see you. I have it figured out that if Brisco thinks it’s a fake, he won’t run it—and if he does print it—well, I don’t know exactly what will happen.”
“A story of any importance?”
“No, I don’t think so—just a little family matter.”
The conversation moved on to other subjects. It turned and wandered and roamed and refused to take the tack that both of them wanted. Not until almost midnight did Newton venture:
“I’ve often wondered—just as a matter of curiosity, you understand—how cheaply two people who really love each other could live—on how small a salary?”
Belle answered:
“I’ve never given the matter serious thought, but from a purely disinterested standpoint I should think”—she did her best to judge what his salary was, so that she might whittle her estimate to fit—“I should think about twenty dollars a week.”
Newton gave a low whistle. Twenty dollars! Two people! He thought of his room, with its mangy curtains and diseased rugs, and said:
“I really don’t think it can be done—comfortably.”
“Of course, you understand,” she hastened to add, “they would have to love each other a great deal.”
And that was as close as they came during the evening to the question of housekeeping on love with a small salary as incidental.
IX.
It was after one o’clock in the morning when Newton, impatient for a copy of his paper to see what had become of the interview—and many were the minutes during which he had debated the wisdom of having sent it in—decided that he would go to “Kelley’s”—a place where a side door was maintained for newspaper men—and try to learn what had happened. A number of the men from the Mail were there, but the city edition had not been printed as yet, and he did not feel like talking to them. After a long, long wait, Kenyon came in.
“Where on earth have you been?” he demanded almost angrily, grasping Newton by the arm. “I’ve looked high and low for you all over the city. Tell me—tell me—— Oh, it’s too late now,” he added in disgust, “but Brisco was wild to know where you met Rockenheimer. And say, that’s some interview! I’ve just read it—here in the last edition—only you left out the place where he was stopping. Here’s the paper.”
“Does look pretty good, doesn’t it? What the——”
Newton’s eyes were wide in amazement, for there, above the featured story on the first page, loomed his name in small, but vividly black letters as the author of the story. He had written a signed article for the Morning Mail, and for the first time the magnitude of his interview dawned on him.
“That certainly is hot stuff,” Kenyon commented. “And say, where did you meet that fellow, anyway?”
Newton hesitated.
“Come on—tell me. I looked all over for him—was on that story, on and off, for three weeks, trying to get a glimpse of him. You put one over on us, all right. How’d you locate him?”
“I guess this is what you call a fake.” Newton spoke as if it were a matter of no importance.
“A what?” Kenyon gasped. “Fake! Do you mean you faked that? Quit your kiddin’! Gee, you gave me a start!”
“I never found anybody. I just wrote it.”
“Man, you don’t mean to tell me this story is a fake?”
“Call it what you like. I’ve told you the way it was.”
“Lord! Oh, Heaven! Sulphuric flames and high water! When Brisco hears that, he’ll blow up and wreck the building!”
“What need is there for him to know?” Newton asked confidentially. “Can’t I put it over on him?”
“Put that over! Oh, you poor chump! Didn’t you know Old Man Rockenheimer has been scouring the earth to find that fool son of his——”
“Fool son?” Newton questioned.
“Yes, that damn-fool young Rockenheimer, who’s always getting into trouble. Just as soon as the managing editor heard of the interview, he wired Rockenheimer that the Mail had found him. Rockenheimer wired back that he would be here to-morrow afternoon. The Mail wants you to produce. We don’t even know he’s in the city.”
“If he is, this story ought to bring him out of hiding. Maybe he’ll show up. We ought to get some credit for that.”
“Credit! We'll get it in the neck from every paper in ten thousand miles for putting such a fake over! Say, you’re in bad and I liked you, too! But you’d better hit for the tall timber while the going’s good.”
“Let’s talk it over,” Newton suggested.
He showed that he was considerably interested in the matter, and for an hour they sat and planned, discussed and talked, and ever and anon made signs to the sleepy gentleman who, from his perch behind the bar, indulged in profane mental comments on proprietors who violated the law by keeping open all night.
“Man,” Kenyon stormed, growing more indignant the longer they talked, “you couldn’t have done a worse thing! You’ve thrown your sheet down—your own paper! I didn’t think you'd do such a trick—on the level, I didn’t! The only thing on God’s green earth left for you to do is to make good or get out. Find Rockenheimer or beat it. You’re in bad! In bad—b-a-d!”
“Can’t I explain to Brisco? Apologize or something?”
Kenyon flung out his hands in despair.
“Heavens and oceans of sulphur! Can’t I make you understand that you’ve raised hell? There isn’t any explanation possible. You've busted the whole decalogue of newspaper commandments——”
“Nix on the Sarah Bernhardt tragedy stuff! You act like I'd killed somebody. I’m going to explain to Brisco this afternoon——”
“You’re crazy! Explain! You can’t explain! You can’t do anything but run!”
“Oh, yes, I can. I can try. He can’t kill me, you know.”
“You don’t know Brisco,” Kenyon warned.
X.
The following morning, Belle and her sister were holding a cheery and affectionate conversation in their room.
“Just as a matter of opinion, Nubsey,” Belle began cautiously, “on how little do you suppose two people can live—two married people who love each other a great deal—I mean a whole lot?”
Stella, from the pinnacle of her importance as a bride-to-be, considered the matter gravely and then announced:
“I think it all depends on the couple. Now, Jack and I can get along on much less than other people. Why, I’m almost sure we could live and be comfortable on thirty-five dollars a week, and there are few girls who would try it for that.”
Belle sighed.
“Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I was just trying to think up some feature stuff for the paper, and it struck me that poverty-stricken newly-weds would be a good subject.”
With that, she listlessly turned to her table and began shuffling the cards, while Stella talked volubly on the important event and the many attendant events that were coming to make her blessed among women.
“How lovely!” she interrupted herself to comment, noticing that the cards were promising a propitious future for Belle. “They are running for you. You always said you were going to marry a rich man—and the cards say the same thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if you did. It’s certainly remarkable the way the cards run.”
“Oh, the cards don’t know anything about it!” Belle exclaimed impatiently, as she swept the cards to one side and jumped up. “And I am not going to marry a rich man! I wouldn’t marry the best rich man on earth. Why, he’s only on a cub reporter’s salary!”
With that she grabbed her hat and coat and fled, leaving her sister standing like one in a trance, vainly wondering if she had heard aright.
XI.
In the office of the Morning Mail, Kenyon was sitting at his desk, watching the door for Newton to enter. When he came in, Kenyon called him to one side.
“The game’s up. You’d better duck.”
“What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” Newton asked, puzzled.
“Now I’m giving you friendly advice. I haven't squealed to anybody and won’t. But when Brisco finds out, you'll get more than you expect. He’s in the managing editor’s office now, with Old Man Rockenheimer
“Oh, then I'll get to explain to him—to ‘Old Man Rockenheimer,’ as you call him. I'll simply tell them how it happened, you know.”
“On the level, Newton, you’re the densest citizen I ever came across! The jig’s up. The best thing you can do is to strike for the tall timber.”
“You say the old man is in there now. Wonder if they’d let me in.”
“Yes, and forty other people.”
“Think I’d better go in and tell them all just how it happened——” But that moment he saw Belle enter and pass through the local room, looking neither to the right nor to the left as usual, to the little office that she shared with the society editor. “Excuse me, Kenyon,” he apologized, “but I have to go and make an important engagement for myself.”
With that he left.
Belle was alone. Her back was turned to the door and she had spread out a copy of the paper. Her heart beat triumphantly as she saw the signed interview. She felt far more happy than had it been her own story. Suddenly she became weak, almost sick, as she recalled what Newton had said about faking an interview the night before.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, seeing that he was beside her.
He bowed slightly and colored deeply.
“You faked that!”
“Listen, please listen, Miss van Buskirk! Don’t start blaming me. Kenyon’s been up in the air all night. I’m in a hurry now and time is precious and”—he was trying to screw up his courage to the sticking point—“and I want to talk to you seriously for about three minutes—real seriously.”
She cleared her throat and told him to go ahead.
“Listen, Miss—I mean—Belle—I want you—I mean—— You know what I mean.” But her eyes were downcast and there was no sign to show that she did, so he continued desperately: “I am in love—with you. I want you—I wanted to tell you before—but—you know. I’m not going to ask you to marry me now, but please won’t you promise that when I get comfortably fixed you will? It won't take long—I don’t think it will. I'll make good for you. I don’t know what’s coming during the next few hours—and I don’t care. We haven’t known each other long, but if I make good for you—if I make good, won’t you marry me?”
Let it be emphatically understood that Belle did not say anything about it being “so sudden.” It was much slower than she had wished for. But she thought hard for a moment. This thing of giving oneself away is a desperate hazard for any but more or less professional summer girls.
“Please, please promise me, Belle dear!” he pleaded. “I love you.” He was reaching for her hand when there burst on his ears the stentorian voice of Brisco, shouting in the local room:
“Tell Newton to come here.”
Almost instantly Kenyon appeared in the doorway.
“Brisco wants you,” he announced simply, not comprehending the significance of the situation.
“Will you?” persisted Newton, lowering his voice. “Tell me. I have to go now—and if you don’t want me, I won't come back. Please tell me.”
Belle, with her head bowed low, looked up at him and with her lips formed the word “Yes.” Newton turned to the doorway with a new-born authority, and said to Kenyon:
“Tell Brisco I’ll be out there in a minute.”
Kenyon turned, and, perhaps he imagined it, but it seemed that no sooner had he done so than he heard a suspicious smack.
The minute passed and more. Brisco thundered again and Kenyon reappeared. This time there was no mistaking the situation, and he coughed vigorously to attract attention. Belle and Newton separated guiltily.
“Excuse me,” Kenyon began, “but Brisco’s out here doin’ a turkey trot and he wants you right away.”
Newton, giving Belle’s hand a parting and tender squeeze, assumed as nonchalant an air as possible and approached the storming Brisco.
“Where’s Rockenheimer?” the city editor demanded explosively.
“How do I know? I was with him last night, but now There’s no telling where he is by this time.”
Kenyon, who heard this, dropped his lower jaw in amazement.
“Where'd you meet him? Where? Can’t you talk, you damn’ fool?”
“Oh, we’ve met several times. You know, he was a college chum of mine.”
Brisco unlimbered a large collection of blankety blanks.
“Bring him right in here, Mr. Brisco,” called the managing editor, who, with Rockenheimer, senior, in his office, did not feel undignified in doing the work of an office boy and had come to the doorway after Newton.
“Go on and tell him the truth, Kenyon,” Newton said, turning to his astonished friend. “You can do it better than I.” Then, to Brisco, “Kenyon knows all about it. He’s really responsible for the story, in a way. He helped me out.”
“That’s a lie!” Kenyon stormed. “The story’s a fake!”
“What?” Brisco roared.
Wow—oh—wow, but the way that man did swear! He unburdened his soul, and a most profane soul it was. And Kenyon chimed in between oaths with a stormy denial of any complicity, damning Newton for a liar and an ingrate.
“Come on, right in here, right here,” the managing editor said to Newton, for he had been too busy watching Rockenheimer, senior, on the other side of the door to catch the drift of the conversation.
While Brisco stood on one foot and swore, and then on the other foot and did likewise, and frantically waved his arms, no matter which foot he stood on, and while Kenyon was protesting and denying, and Belle, in breathless alarm, was watching them from the door of her room, Newton walked toward the managing editor and was ushered into the presence of the great Rockenheimer.
For a moment the two looked at each other. Then the old man started forward to grasp the reporter affectionately, exclaiming:
“Why, Harry! My boy!”
The managing editor wilted and leaned against the wall. Brisco gasped.
“Harry,” the old man asked quietly, almost tenderly, “why did you talk so foolishly to that reporter?”
Thereupon came quickly a full confession:
“I’ve always wanted to be a reporter, They’re the only people that have you bluffed and I wondered how it would feel. And when he told me to get that interview, I nearly tumbled over in surprise. I wasn’t sure that he didn’t know who I was. Brisco’s such a queer fellow, I thought it would be just about like him to play some such trick, But I thought it a good time to have myself interviewed.”
“All right. It’s all right, my boy. Now of course I want to meet the young lady you described so well this morning.”
“Certainly. Right this way, father.”
And the man of whom it was said that he owned half the earth and was trying to put a fence around it looked long and tenderly into the brown eyes of the blushing, confused girl. None ever knew what he thought, for he was a man of deep silences, but when he took her hand between his own, he held it for some moments and there was moisture in his eyes.
“Love,” he said, “is all that’s worth while, after all.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1948, 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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