Cobb Irvin Shrewsbury
Local Color

CHAPTER VIII
ENTER THE VILLAIN

It is conceded, I believe, that every story should have a moral; also, whenever possible, a heroine or a hero, a villainess or a villain, a plot and a climax. Now this story has a villain of sorts, if you choose to look upon him in that light; but no hero, and no climax. And certainly there is no moral to adorn the tale. So far as I have been able to discover it is absolutely moral-less. So then, reader, if you, being thus foreadvised regarding these avowed shortcomings of my narrative, choose to go further with it, the responsibility must be yours and not mine. Don’t you come round afterward saying I didn’t warn you.

The rise of the curtain discloses the city room of The Clarion, a New York morning newspaper. The hour is six-thirty P. M., the period is the approximate present, and the season is summer time. At a desk in the foreground is discovered the head office boy in the act of scissoring certain marked passages out of copies of the afternoon papers and impaling them upon spindles. Beyond him, at a big oaken table shaped like half of a pie, a lone copy reader is humped in his chair, chewing on a cold pipestem and editing a bad piece of copy with a relentless black lead. In this case the copy reader is named Hemburg. He is of a type of which at least one example is to be found in nearly every large newspaper shop – a competent failure, gone alcoholically to seed; usually holding down a desk job; rarely quite drunk and rarely quite sober, and in this mid-state of befuddlement performing his work with a strange mechanical accuracy; but once in a while he comes on duty cold sober – cause unknown – and then the chances are he does something unpardonably wrong, something incredibly stupid, which costs him his job. Just such a man is this present man Hemburg. As, shoving his pencil, he carves the very giblets out of the last sheet of the belated typewritten manuscript lying under his hand, the sunlight, slanting in at a west window behind him, falls over his shoulders in a streaked flood, making his reddened face seem redder than ever – as red as hearth paint – and turning his ears a bright, clear, pinkish colour, as though they might be two little memorial panes set there in dedication to the wasted life and the frittered talents of their owner.

Farther up stage the city-hall reporter, who because he has passed his fortieth birthday and has grey in his hair is known as Pop, and the ship-news reporter, who because he is the ship-news reporter is known as Skipper, the same as in all well-regulated newspaper offices, are pasting up their strings, both of them being space men. Otherwise the big bare room with its rows of desks and its scrap-strewn floor is quite empty. This hour, coming between six and seven, in the city room of The Clarion or any other big paper, is apt to be the quietest of all hours between starting time, early in the afternoon, and quitting time, early in the morning. The day city editor, having finished his stint, has gone off watch, leaving behind for his successor, the night city editor, a single scrawled sheet upon which is recorded the tally of things accomplished, things undertaken and things failed at. The reporters who got afternoon assignments have most of them turned in their stories and have taken other assignments which will keep them out of the office until much later. So almost an ecclesiastical quiet fills the city room now.

For the matter of that, it is only in the dramatic versions that a newspaper office ever attains the aspect of frenzied tumult so familiar and so agreeable to patrons of plays purporting to deal with newspaper life. As usually depicted upon the stage, a city room near press time is something like a skating rink, something like the recreation hall of a madhouse, something like a munitions factory working overtime on war orders, and nothing at all like a city room. Even when its manifold activities are in full swing the actual city room, save for the click of typewriter keys, is apt to be as sedately quiet as – let’s see now! What would make a suitable comparison? Well – as sedately quiet, say, as the reading room of the average Carnegie Library.

Six-thirty-four – enter the villain.

The practical door at the right opened and Mr. Foxman came in. In just what he stood in he might have posed for the typical picture of the typical New York business man; not the tired business man for whom the musical shows are supposed to be written but the kind of business man who does not tire so easily. A close-cropped, greyish moustache, a pair of nose glasses riding a short, pugnacious nose in front of two keen eyes, a well-knit middle-age shape inside of a smart-fitting suit, a positive jaw, an air of efficiency and a square shoulder – that briefly would be Mr. Hobart Foxman, managing editor of The Clarion.

His nod included the city-hall reporter and the ship-news man. Passing by Hemburg without speaking, he halted a minute alongside the desk where the head copy boy speared his shearings upon his battery of spindles.

“Singlebury come in yet?” asked Mr. Foxman.

“No, sir; not yet, sir,” said the head copy boy. “But he’s due any minute now, I guess. I phoned him you wanted to see him at a quarter to seven.”

“When he comes tell him to come right into my office.”

“Yes, sir; I’ll tell him, sir.”

“Did you get those envelopes out of the morgue that I telephoned you about?”

“Yes, sir; they’re all four of ’em on your desk, sir,” said the boy, and he made as though to get up from his seat.

“Never mind,” said Mr. Foxman. “I guess I can find them without any help. … Oh, yes, Benny, I’m not to be disturbed during the next hour for anything. Nobody is to see me except Singlebury. Understand?”

“Yes, sir – nobody,” said Benny. “I’ll remember, sir.”

Inside his own room, which opened directly upon the city room, Mr. Foxman brushed from his desk a neatly piled file of the afternoon papers, glanced through a heap of mail – some personal mail, but mostly official – without opening any of the letters, and then gave his attention to four big soiled manila envelopes which rested side by side upon his wide blue blotter pad. One of these envelopes was labelled, across its upper front, “Blake, John W.”; the second was labelled “Bogardus, S. P.”; the third, “Pratt, Ezra”; and the fourth, “Pearl Street Trolley Line.” Each of the four bulged dropsically with its contents, which contents, when Mr. Foxman had bent back the envelope flaps and emptied the envelopes, proved to be sheafs of newspaper clippings, some frayed with handling and yellowed with age, some still fresh and crisp, and all bearing the stencilled identification mark of the functionary who runs what is called in some shops the obit department and in other shops the morgue.

Keeping each set in its own separate pile, Mr. Foxman began running through these clippings, now and then putting aside one for future consideration. In the midst of this he broke off to take up his desk telephone and, when the girl at the private switchboard upstairs answered, bade her ring for him a certain private number, not to be found in the telephone directory.

“That you, Moreau?” briskly asked Mr. Foxman when, after a short wait, a voice at the other end of the wire spoke. “How are you? … Quite well, thank you. … I want to speak with the general. … Yes, yes, yes, I know that, but this is important – very important. … Yes, I know that too; but I won’t detain him but a minute. … Thanks. … Yes, I’ll wait right here.”

There was another little delay while Mr. Foxman held the receiver to his ear and kept his lips close to the transmitter. Then:

“Good evening, general – Foxman speaking.”

Into the managing editor’s tone was come a soothed and softened deference – something of the same deference which Benny, the head office boy, had used in addressing Mr. Foxman. It was a different tone, very, from the sharpened, almost staccato note that Mr. Foxman had been employing but a minute before. Why not? Moreau was but the great man’s private secretary and this man, whom now he addressed, was the great man himself – General Robert Bruce Lignum, sole proprietor of The Clarion– and the only person, barring himself, from whom Mr. Foxman took orders. Big fleas, you know, have smaller fleas which on them prey; but while preying, the little fleas, if they be little fleas wise in their own generation, are, I take it, likely to cultivate between bites and to use that flattering conversational accent which, the world over, is the most subtle tribute that may be paid by the smaller to the greater and by the greater to the most great. In this agreeably tempered tempo then Mr. Foxman continued, with pauses for his employer’s replies.

“Sorry, general, to have to call you just as you’re starting for the pier, but I was particularly anxious to catch you before you left the house.” Instinctively he lowered his voice, although there was no need for any excess of caution. “General, I think I’ve got that trolley-grab exposé practically lined up. Bogardus told me this afternoon that the third man – you know the one I mean – is ready to talk. It looks to me like a bigger thing even than we thought it might be. It’s a scurvy crew we’re dealing with, but the end justifies the means. Don’t you think so, sir? … Yes, that’s right, too – when thieves fall out honest men get their due. … Sir? … Yes, that’s my idea, too – to spring the first big story right out of a clear sky and then follow up with an editorial campaign and supplementary news stories until we get action in the district-attorney’s office. … How’s that, sir? … Oh, no, indeed, general, not the slightest particle of danger in my opinion. Personally, I think all this talk about floating mines and submarines has been greatly exaggerated. … I think you can go right ahead in perfect safety. You must know, general, that I wouldn’t be giving you this advice if I thought there was the slightest danger. … Well, good-by, general, and pleasant voyage. … Oh, yes, indeed, I’ll surely find some way of keeping you posted about the situation at Albany if anything develops in that quarter. … Well, good-by again, general.”

He hung up the receiver and turned his hands again to the contents of the morgue envelopes. He was still at this when there came at his door a knock.

“Come in,” he said without looking up.

The man who entered was tall and slender, young enough to be well this side of thirty and old enough, in his experiences, to wear that manner of schooled, appraising disillusionment which marks so many of his calling. Most good reporters look like good reporters; they radiate from them knowledge, confidence, skepticism, sometimes a little of pessimism, and always a good deal of sophisticated enthusiasm. It is the same air which goes with men, be their separate callings what they may, who have devoted their lives to prying open the lid of the world to see what makes the thing tick. They have a curiosity not only to see the wheels go round but to find out what the motive power behind and beneath the wheels may be.

Never mind what the after-dinner speaker says – the press is not an Archimedean lever and probably never was. It is a kit containing a cold chisel, a test acid, an assay chemical and a paint-box. Generally the users of this outfit bear themselves accordingly. Once in a while, though, there comes along a reporter who deceivingly resembles a rather stupid, good-natured plumber’s helper dressed in his Sunday best. To look at him he seems as plain as an old shoe, as open as an old shoe too. But if you have something to hide from the public gaze, beware this person. He is the most dangerous one of them all. His business being everybody’s business, he is prepared to go to any ends to dig it out. As a professional detective he could make himself famous. He prefers to remain a journeyman reporter.

“Take a chair, Singlebury,” said Mr. Foxman; “I’ll be through here in just a minute.”

Singlebury sat down, glancing about him. It was the first time he had seen this room. He had been on The Clarion’s staff less than a month, having come on from the West, where he served the years of his apprenticeship on a San Francisco daily. Presently his chief swivelled half round so as to face him.

“Young man,” he said, “I’ve got a cracking good assignment for you – one that ought to put you in right, in this shop and this town. Ordinarily this job would go to Shesgren – he usually handles this sort of thing for me – but Shesgren is up at Albany keeping his eye on General Lignum’s political fences, and I don’t want to call him back, especially as the general is leaving the country to-night. Besides you did a good job of work last week on that Oskarson baby-stealing mystery, and so I’ve decided to give you a chance to swing this story.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Singlebury, flushing up a little. “I’ll do my best, sir.”

“Your best won’t do – you’ve got to do better than your best. Did you ever hear, since you came to this town, of the Pearl Street trolley line or the Pearl Street trolley loop?”

“Well,” said Singlebury, “I know there is such a line as the Pearl Street line. That’s about all.”

“That needn’t hamper you,” said Mr. Foxman. “I’d a little rather you went at this thing with an open mind, anyhow. These clippings here” – he tapped one heap of them with his forefinger – “ought to give you a pretty clear idea of the situation in the past, if you’ll read ’em through carefully. They’ll show you that the Pearl Street line has been a sort of financial football for certain interests down in Wall Street for a good many years. The fellows behind it starved it to death and let the equipment run down while they juggled the paper and skinned the dear public.”

“I see,” said Singlebury; “same old story – plenty of water for the road but no solid nourishment for the investors.”

“That’s a good line,” commended Mr. Foxman; “better save it up for your story and use it there. But it’s not the same old story over again. At least this time there’s a new twist to it.

“Up until now the crowd that have been manipulating the stock stayed inside the law, no matter what else they may have done that was shady. But I have cause to believe that a new gang has stepped in – a gang headed by John W. Blake of the Blake Bank. You’ve heard of him, I guess?”

Singlebury nodded.

“It’s been known for some time on the inside that the Blake outfit were figuring on a merger of some of the independent East Side surface lines – half a dozen scattered lines, more or less. There’ve been stories printed about this – we printed some of them ourselves. What hasn’t been known was that they had their hooks into the Pearl Street line too. Poor outcast as it is, the Pearl Street line, with the proposed Pearl Street loop round Five Points – a charter was granted for that extension some time ago – will form the connecting link to the combination they’re figuring on. And then on top of that there’s the direct connection to be made with the new Brooklyn subway that’s being built now. If you’ll look at the map of the East Side lines you’ll see for yourself how important it is for the group that intends to take control of the trolley lines on this side of the river and hopes to control the subway to the other side of the river that they should have the Pearl Street loop in their grip. With it they win; without it there’s doubt of the success of their plan.

“Well, that part of it is legitimate enough, I suppose. The common stock of the Pearl Street line has been shoved down and down and down, until to-day it touched twenty. And Blake’s crowd on the quiet have been buying it in – freezing out the small stockholders as they went along, and knowing mighty good and well that the day they announced their merger the stock would go up with a jump – thirty or forty or fifty points maybe – and then they’d clean up. Well, I suppose that’s legitimate too – at least it’s recognised as regular on Wall Street, provided you can get away with it. But behind the scenes there’s been some outright, downright, grand larceny going on and, along with that, legislative corruption too.

“The stealing has been covered up so far, under a blanket of legal embroidery and fancy phraseology. Trust a wise outfit of lawyers, like the outfit Blake has on his pay roll, to attend to those little details. But I have reason to believe, having got hold of the inside story from strictly private sources, that the gang now in control have laid themselves liable to prison sentences by a few of the tricks they’ve pulled off. For instance, they haven’t let a little thing like bribery stand in their way. They weren’t satisfied to stifle a competitive interest politely and quietly, according to the Wall Street standards. No; these thugs just naturally clubbed it to death. I guess they saw so much in it for themselves they took a long chance on being indicted if the facts ever came out. And I happen to know where we can get the facts if we go about it in the right way. Listen, carefully!”

For five minutes he talked on, expounding and explaining in straightaway, sharp sentences. And Singlebury, on the edge of his chair, listening, felt the lust of the big-game hunter quicken within him. Every real reporter is a big-game hunter at heart, and the weapon he uses frequently is a deadly one, even though it is nothing more than a lead pencil costing five cents at any stationery shop. The scent was in his nose now, dilating his nostrils; he wriggled to take the trail.

“Now, then, you’ve got the inside dope, as I get it myself,” said Mr. Foxman at the end of those pregnant five minutes. “You can see for yourself, though, that a good deal of it – the vital part of it as it stands now – is mostly surmise and suspicion. Naturally, we can’t go to the bat against this gang with suspicions; we’d probably land in jail ourselves for criminal libel, instead of landing a few of them in jail, as we hope to do. But if we can prove up – if we can get hold of the rest of the evidence – it’ll make one of the sweetest beats that was ever pulled off in this town.

“Of course, as you can see, John W. Blake is the principal figure in the whole intrigue, just as the Pearl Street line is the key to the merger scheme. But you stay away from Blake. Don’t go near him – yet. If he gets wind of what we are figuring on doing here in this office he might have influence enough to make trouble for us before we’re ready for the big blow-off. Leave Blake out of it for the time being – leave him strictly alone! He can do his talking and his explaining after we’ve smoked the nigger out of the woodpile. But here are two other men” – he touched the remaining piles of sorted-out clippings – “who are willing, under cover, to indulge in a little conversation. I want you to read these morgue clippings, more to get an angle on their personalities than for any other reason. Bogardus – Samuel P. Bogardus – used to be Blake’s best little trained performing lobbyist. When it comes to handling the members of a general assembly or a board of aldermen he’s fuller of cute tricks than a clown dog is. Old Pratt is a different kind of crook – a psalm-singing, pussyfooted old buccaneer, teaching a Bible class on Sundays and thimblerigging in Wall Street on week days. As a Pharisee who’s working at the trade he’d make any Pharisee you ever ran across out yonder on the Pacific Slope, where you came from, look like a piker.

“Well, for reasons best known to themselves they happen just at present to be sore at Blake. There’s been a falling-out. He may have used them to do his dirty work in the past; and then, when this melon is ripe to cut, frozen both of them out of the picnic. I don’t care anything about their quarrels, or their motives either; I am after this story.

“Now, then, here’s your campaign: You take to-night off – I’ll tell the night city editor I’ve assigned you on a special detail – and you spend the evening reading up on these clippings, so you’ll have the background – the local colour for your story – all in your head. To-morrow morning at ten o’clock you go to the Wampum Club up on East Fiftieth Street and send your name in to Mr. Bogardus. He’ll be waiting there in a private room for you, and old Pratt will be with him. We’ll have to keep them under cover, of course, and protect them up to the limit, in exchange for the stuff they’re willing to give up to us. So you’re not to mention them as the sources of any part of your information. Don’t name them in your story or to anybody on earth before or after we print it. Take all the notes you please while you’re with them, but keep your notes put away where nobody can see ’em, and tear ’em up as soon as you’re done with ’em. They’ll probably keep you there a couple of hours, because they’ve got a lot to tell, son; take it from me they have. Well, say they keep you three hours. That’ll give you time to get your lunch and catch the subway and be down town by two-thirty.

“At three o’clock to-morrow afternoon you go to the law offices of Myrowitz, Godfrey, Godfrey & Murtha in the Pyramid Building on Cedar Street. Ask to see Mr. Murtha. Send your name in to him; he’ll be expecting you. Murtha is in the firm now, but he gets out on the fifteenth – four days from now. There’s been a row there, too, I believe, and the other partners are shoving him out into the cold. He’s sore. Murtha ought to be able to tell the rest of what you’ll have to know in order to make our story absolutely libel proof. It may take some digging on your part, but he’ll come through if you only go at him the right way. In questioning him you can probably take your cues from what Bogardus and Pratt have already told you. That end of it, though, is up to you. Anyhow, by this time to-morrow night you ought to have your whole story lined up.”

“Do you want me to come back here then and write it for the next morning?” asked Singlebury.

“I don’t want you to write it here at all,” said Mr. Foxman. “This thing is too big and means too much for us to be taking a chance on a leak anywhere. Have you got a quiet room to yourself where nobody can break in on you?”

“Yes, sir,” said Singlebury. “I’m living at the Godey Arms Hotel.”

“All right then,” said Mr. Foxman. “You rent a typewriter and have it sent up to your room to-morrow morning. When you are ready to start you get inside that room and sit down at that typewriter with the door locked behind you, and you stay there till you’ve finished your yarn. You ought to be able to do it in a day, by steady grinding. When you’re done tear up all your notes and burn the scraps. Then put your copy in a sealed envelope and bring it down here and deliver it to me, personally, here in this room – understand? If I’m busy with somebody else when you get here wait until I’m alone. And in the meantime, don’t tell the city editor or any member of the staff, or your closest friend, or your best girl – if you’ve got one – that you are working on this story. You’ve not only got to get it but you’ve got to keep your mouth shut while you’re getting it and after you’ve got it – got to keep mum until we print it. There’ll be time enough for you to claim credit when the beat is on the street.”

“I understand, sir,” said Singlebury. “And I’m certainly mighty grateful to you, Mr. Foxman, for this chance.”

“Never mind that,” said Mr. Foxman. “I’m not picking you for this job because I like the colour of your hair, or because I’m taken by the cut of your clothes. I’m picking you because I think you can swing it. Now, then, go to it!”

Singlebury went to it. With all his reporter’s heart and all his reporter’s soul and, most of all, with all his reporter’s nose he went to it. Tucked away in a corner of the evening edition’s art room, deserted now and dark except for the circle of radiance where he sat beneath an electric bulb, he read and reread the scissorings entrusted to him by Mr. Foxman, until his mind was saturated with the subject, holding in solution a mass of information pertaining to the past activities of the Pearl Street trolley line and of John W. Blake, freebooter of big business; and of Ezra Pratt, class leader and financier; and of S. P. Bogardus, statesman and legislative agent.

It was nearly midnight before he restored each group of clippings to its proper envelope and took the envelopes to a grated window behind the library and handed them in to a youth on duty there. First, though, he took time, sitting there in the empty art room, to write a short, joyous letter to a certain person in San Jose, California, telling her the big chance had come to him very much sooner than he had expected, and that if he made good on it – as he had every intention of doing – they might not, after all, have to wait so very long for that marriage license and that wedding and that little flat here in little old New York. Then he went uptown to the Godey Arms Hotel, where his dreams that night were such dreams as an ambitious young man very much in love with two sweethearts – one a profession and the other a girl – might be expected to dream under such circumstances.

Next morning, at the Wampum Club, he saw Bogardus, a grey-haired, rotund man, and Pratt, an elderly gentleman, with a smile as oily as a fish duck’s apprehending minnows, and a manner as gentle as a fox’s stalking a hen-roost. From these two he extracted all that he had expected to get and more besides. Indeed, he had but to hold out his hands and together they shook fruity facts and fruitier figures down upon him in a shower. Until nearly two o’clock they kept him with them. He had just time to snatch a hurried bite at a dairy lunch, board a subway express at the Grand Central, and be at the offices of Myrowitz, Godfrey, Godfrey & Murtha at three o’clock. A sign painter was altering the firm’s name on the outer door of the firm’s reception room, his aim plainly being to shorten it by the elimination of the Murtha part of it. On beyond the door the gentleman who thus was being eliminated received Singlebury in a private room and gave him nearly two hours of his valuable time.

From what Mr. Foxman had said Singlebury rather expected Mr. Murtha, at the outset, might be reluctant to furnish the coupling links between the legal chicanery and the financial skullduggery which would make this projected merger a conspicuous scandal in a district of conspicuous industrial scandals; had rather expected Mr. Murtha’s mind might require crafty sounding and skillful pumping. Here Singlebury was agreeably surprised, for, it being first understood that Mr. Murtha’s name was nowhere to appear in what Singlebury might write, Mr. Murtha proved to be as frank as frank could be. Indeed, when it came to a disclosure of the rôles played by two of his associates, from whom now he was parting, Mr. Murtha, the retiring member of this well-known house of corporation law, betrayed an almost brutal frankness. They, doubtlessly, would have called it rank professional treachery – base, personal ingratitude and a violation of all the ethics of their highly ethical calling.

Mr. Murtha, looking at things through very different glasses, put it on the high ground of his duty, as a citizen and a taxpayer, to the general health and the general morality of the general public. It is this same difference of opinion which makes neighbourhood quarrels, lawsuits and wars between nations popular in the most civilised climes.

In all essential details, the tale, when Murtha was through with Singlebury and Singlebury was through with Murtha, stood completed and connected, jointed and doubt-proof. That second evening Singlebury spent in his room, arranging his data in their proper sequence and mapping out in his head his introduction. Next day, all day, he wrote his story. Just before dusk he drew the last page out of his typewriter and corrected it. The job was done and it was a good job. It ran four columns and over. It stripped that traffic grab to its bare and grinning bones. It was loaded with bombshells for the proposed merger and with the shrapnel of certain criminal prosecution for the men behind that merger, and most of all for John W. Blake, the man behind those other and lesser men.

To Singlebury, though, it was even more than this. To him it was a good story, well written, well balanced, happily adjusted, smartly phrased; and on top of this, it was the most precious jewel of a reporter’s treasure casket. It was a cracking, smashing, earth-shaking, exclusive – scoop, as they would have called it out yonder on the Coast where he came from – beat, as they would call it here in New York.

Personally, as per instructions, he put the finished manuscript into the hands of Mr. Foxman, in Mr. Foxman’s office, then stood by while Mr. Foxman ran through the opening paragraphs.

“Singlebury,” said Mr. Foxman, laying the sheets down, “this looks to me like a good piece of work. I like your beginning, anyhow. The first ten lines ought to blow that bunch of pirates clean out of water.” He glanced keenly at the drooping figure of the other. “Kind of played out, aren’t you?”

“A little,” confessed the reporter. “Now that it’s over, I do feel a bit let down.”

“I’ll bet you do,” said Mr. Foxman. “Well, you’d better run along to your hotel and get a good night’s rest. Take to-morrow off too – don’t report here until day after to-morrow; that’ll be Friday, won’t it? All right then, I’ll see you Friday afternoon here; I may have something of interest to say to you then. Meanwhile, as I told you before, keep your mouth shut to everybody. I don’t know yet whether I’ll want to run your story to-morrow morning or the morning after. My information is that Blake, through his lawyers, will announce the completion of the merger, probably on Friday, or possibly on Saturday. I may decide to hold off the explosion until they come out with their announcement. Really, that would be the suitable moment to open fire on ’em and smash up their little stock-market game for them.”