The Escape of Mr. Trimm Read online

  IV

  ANOTHER OF THOSE CUB REPORTER STORIES

  The first time I saw Major Putnam Stone I didn't see him first. To beexact, I heard him first, and then I walked round the end of aseven-foot partition and saw him.

  I had just gone to work for the Evening Press. As I recall now it was mysecond day, and I hadn't begun to feel at home there yet, and probablywas more sensitive to outside sights and noises than I would ever againbe in that place. Generally speaking, when a reporter settles down tohis knitting, which in his case is his writing, he becomes impervious toall disturbances excepting those that occur inside his own brainpan. Ifhe couldn't, he wouldn't amount to shucks in his trade. Give him a good,live-action story to write for an edition going to press in about nineminutes, and the rattles and slams of half a dozen typewriting machines,and the blattings of a pestered city editor, and the gabble of a coupleof copy boys at his elbow, and all the rest of it won't worry him. Hemay not think he hears it, but he does, only instead of beingdistracting it is stimulating. It's all a part of the mechanism of theshop, helping him along unconsciously to speed and efficiency. I'veoften thought that, when I was handling a good, bloody murder story,say, it would tone up my style to have a phonograph about ten feet awaygrinding out The Last Ravings of John McCullough. Anyway, I am sure itwouldn't do any harm. A brass band playing a John Philip Sousa marchmakes fine accompaniment to write copy to. I've done it before now,covering parades and conventions, and I know.

  But on this particular occasion I was, as I say, new to the job andmaybe a little nervous to boot, and as I sat there, trying to frame asnappy opening paragraph for the interview I had just brought back withme from one of the hotels, I became aware of a voice somewhere in theimmediate vicinity, a voice that didn't jibe in with my thoughts. At themoment I stopped to listen it was saying: "As for me, sir, I have alwayscontended that the ultimate fate of the cause was due in great measureto the death of Albert Sidney Johnston at Shiloh on the evening of thefirst day's fight. Now then, what would have been the final result ifAlbert Sidney Johnston had lived? I ask you, gentlemen, what would havebeen the final result if Albert Sidney Johnston had lived?"

  Across the room from me I heard Devore give a hollow groan. His desk wasbacked right up against the cross partition, and the partition was builtof thin pine boards and was like a sounding board in his ear. Devore wascity editor.

  "Oh, thunder!" he said, half under his breath, "I'll be the goat! Whatwould have been the result if Albert Sidney Johnston had lived?" Helooked at me and gave a wink of serio-comic despair, and then he ran hisblue pencil up through his hair and left a blue streak like a scar onhis scalp. Devore was one of the few city editors I have ever seen whoused that tool which all of them are popularly supposed to handle somurderously--a blue pencil. And as he had a habit, when he was flusteredor annoyed--and that was most of the time--of scratching his head withthe point end of it, his forehead under the hair roots was usuallystreaked with purplish-blue tracings, like a fly-catcher's egg.

  The voice, which had a deep and space-filling quality to it, continuedto come through and over the partition that divided off our cubby-holeof a workroom--called a city room by courtesy--from the space wherecertain other members of the staff had their desks. I got up from myplace and stepped over to where the thin wall ended in a doorway, beingminded to have a look at the speaker. The voice sounded as though itmust belong to a big man with a barrel-organ chest. I was surprised tofind that it didn't.

  Its owner was sitting in a chair in the middle of a little spacecluttered up with discarded exchanges and galley proofs. He was rather asmall man, short but compact. He had his hat off and his hair, which wasthin but fine as silk floss, was combed back over his ears and sprayedout behind in a sort of mane effect. It had been red hair once, but wasnow so thickly streaked with white that it had become a faded brindlecolor. I took notice of this first because his back was toward me; in asecond or two he turned his head sideways and I saw that he had exactlythe face to match the hair. It was a round, plump, elderly face, with ashort nose, delicately pink at the tip. The eyes were a pale blue, andjust under the lower lip, which protruded slightly, was a small gray-redgoatee, sticking straight out from a cleft in the chin like a dab of asandy sheep's wool. Also, as the speaker swung himself further round, Itook note of a shirt of plaited white linen billowing out over his chestand ending at the top in a starchy yet rumply collar that rolledmajestically and Byronically clear up under his ears. Under the collarwas loosely knotted a black-silk tie such as sailors wear. His vest wasunbuttoned, all except the two lowermost buttons, and the sleeves ofhis coat were turned back neatly off his wrists. This, though, couldnot have been on account of the heat, because the weather wasn't veryhot yet. I learned later that, winter or summer, he always kept his coatsleeves turned back and the upper buttons of his vest unfastened. Hishands were small and plump, and his feet were small too and daintilyshod in low, square-toed shoes. About the whole man there was an airsomehow of full-bloomed foppishness gone to tassel--as though havingbeen a dandy once, he was now merely neat and precise in his way ofdress.

  He was talking along with the death of Albert Sidney Johnston for hissubject, not seeming to notice that his audience wasn't deeplyinterested. He had, it seemed, a way of stating a proposition as a fact,as an indisputable, everlasting, eternal fact, an immutable thing. Itbecame immutable through his way of stating it. Then he would frame itin the form of a question and ask it. Then he would answer it himselfand go right ahead.

  Boynton, the managing editor, was coiled up at his desk, wearing a lookof patient endurance on his face. Harty, the telegraph editor, wastrying to do his work--trying, I say, because the orator was boomingaway like a bittern within three feet of him and Harty plainly waspestered and fretful. Really the only person in sight who seemedentertained was Sidley, the exchange editor, a young man with hair thathad turned white before its time and in his eye the devil-driven look ofa man who drinks hard, not because he wants to drink but because hecan't help drinking. Sidley, as I was to find out later, had less causeto care for the old man than anybody about the shop, for he used todisarrange Sidley's neatly piled exchanges, pawing through them for hisfavorite papers. But Sidley could forget his own grievances in watchfulenjoyment of the dumb sufferings of Harty, whom he hated, as I came toknow, with the blind hate a dipsomaniac often has for any mild andperfectly harmless individual.

  As I stood there taking in the picture, the speaker, sensing astranger's presence, faced clear about and saw me. He nodded with agrave courtesy, and then paused a moment as though expecting that one ofthe others would introduce us. None of the others did introduce usthough, so he went ahead talking about Albert Sidney Johnston's death,and I turned away. I stopped by Devore's desk.

  "Who is he?" I asked.

  "That," he said, with a kind of leashed and restrained ferocity in hisvoice, "is Major Putnam P. Stone--and the P stands for Pest, which ishis middle name--late of the Southern Confederacy."

  "Picturesque-looking old fellow, isn't he?" I said.

  "Picturesque old nuisance," he said, and jabbed at his scalp with hispencil as though he meant to puncture his skull. "Wait until you've beenhere a few weeks and you'll have another name for him."

  "Well, anyway, he's got a good carrying voice," I said, rather at a lossto understand Devore's bitterness.

  "Great," he mocked venomously; "you can hear it a mile. I hear it in mysleep. So will you when you get to know him, the old bore!"

  In due time I did get to know Major Stone well. He was dignified,tiresome, conversational, gentle mannered and, I think, rather lonely.By driblets, a scrap here and a scrap there, I learned something abouthis private life. He came from the extreme eastern end of the state. Hebelonged to an old family. His grandfather--or maybe it was hisgreat-grand-uncle--had been one of the first United States senators thatwent to Washington after our state was admitted into the Union. He hadnever married. He had no business or profession. From some property orother he d
rew an income, small, but enough to keep him in a sort ofsimple and genteel poverty. He belonged to the best club in town and themost exclusive, the Shawnee Club, and he had served four years in theConfederate army. That last was the one big thing in his life. To themajor's conceptions everything that happened before 1861 had been of apreparatory nature, leading up to and paving the way for the mainevent; and what had happened since 1865 was of no consequence, except inso far as it reflected the effects of the Civil War.

  Daily, as methodically as a milkwagon horse, he covered the same route.First he sat in the reading room of the old Gaunt House, where by anopen fire in winter or by an open window in summer he discussed theblunders of Braxton Bragg and similar congenial topics with a littlegroup of aging, fading, testy veterans. On his way to the Shawnee Clubhe would come by the Evening Press office and stay an hour, or twohours, or three hours, to go away finally with a couple of favoredexchanges tucked under his arm, and leave us with our ears still dinnedand tingling. Once in a while of a night, passing the Gaunt House on myway to the boarding house where I lived--for four dollars a week--Iwould see him through the windows, sometimes sitting alone, sometimeswith one of his cronies.

  Round the office he sometimes bothered us and sometimes he interferedwith our work; but mainly all the men on the staff liked him, I think,or at least we put up with him. In our home town each of us had knownsomebody very much like him--there used to be at least one Major Stonein every community in the South, although most of them are dead now, Iguess--so we all could understand him. When I say all I mean all butDevore. The major's mere presence would poison Devore's whole day forhim. The major's blaring notes would cross-cut Devore's nerves as with adull and haggling saw. He--Devore I mean--disliked the major with adislike almost too deep for words. It had got to be an obsession withhim.

  "You fellows that were born down here have to stand for him," he saidonce, when the major had stumped out on his short legs after anunusually long visit. "It's part of the penalty you pay for belonging inthis country. But I don't have to venerate him and fuss over him andlisten to him. I'm a Yankee, thank the Lord!" Devore came from Michiganand had worked on papers in Cleveland and Detroit before he driftedSouth. "Oh, we've got his counterpart up my way," he went on. "Up therehe'd be a pension-grabbing old kicker, ready to have a fit any timeanybody wearing a gray uniform got within ninety miles of him, andwriting red-hot letters of protest to the newspapers every time thestate authorities sent a captured battle flag back down South. Down herehe's a pompous, noisy old fraud, too proud to work for a living--or toolazy--and too poor to count for anything in this world. The differenceis that up in my country we've squelched the breed--we got good andtired of these professional Bloody Shirt wavers a good while ago; buthere you fuss over this man, and you'll sit round and pretend to listenwhile he drools away about things that happened before any one of youwas born. Do you fellows know what I've found out about your MajorPutnam Stone? He's a life member of the Shawnee Club--a life member,mind you! And here I've been living in this town over a year, and nobodyever so much as invited me inside its front door!"

  All of which was, perhaps, true, even though Devore had an unnecessarilyharsh way of stating the case; the part about the Shawnee Club was true,at any rate, and I used to think it possibly had something to do withDevore's feelings for Major Stone. Not that Devore gave open utteranceto his feelings to the major's face. To the major he was always silentlypolite, with a little edging of ice on his politeness; he saved up hisspleen to spew it out behind the old fellow's back. Farther than that hecouldn't well afford to go anyhow. The Chief, owner of the paper and itseditor, was the major's friend. As for the major himself, he seemednever to notice Devore's attitude. For a fact, I believe he actuallyfelt a sort of pity for Devore, seeing that Devore had been born in theNorth. Not to have been born in the South was, from the major's way oflooking at the thing, a great and regrettable misfortune for which thevictim could not be held responsible, since the fault lay with hisparents and not with him. By way of a suitable return for this, Devorespent many a spare moment thinking up grotesque yet wickedlyappropriate nicknames for the major. He called him Old First and SecondManassas and Old Hardee's Tactics and Old Valley of Virginia. He calledhim an old bluffer too.

  He was wrong there, though, certainly. Though the major talked prettyexclusively about the war, I took notice that he rarely talked about thepart he himself had played in it. Indeed, he rarely discussed anybodybelow the rank of brigadier. The errors of Hood's campaign concerned himmore deeply than the personal performances of any individual. Campaignsyou might say were his specialty, campaigns and strategy. About suchthings as these he could talk for hours--and he did.

  I've known other men--plenty of them--not nearly so well educated as themajor, who could tell you tales of the war that would make you seeit--yes, and smell it too--the smoke of the campfires, the unutterablefatigue of forced marches when the men, with their tongues lolling outof their mouths like dogs, staggered along, panting like dogs; thebloody prints of unshod feet on flinty, frozen clods; the shock andfearful joy of the fighting; the shamed numbness of retreats; artilleryhorses, their hides all blood-boltered and their tails clubbed andclotted with mire, lying dead with stiff legs between overturned guns;dead men piled in heaps and living men huddled in panics--all of it. Butwhen the major talked I saw only some serious-minded officers, inwhiskers of an obsolete cut and queer-looking shirt collars, poring overmaps round a table in a farmhouse parlor. When he chewed on the cud ofthe vanished past it certainly was mighty dry chewing.

  There came a day, a few weeks after I went to work for the EveningPress, when for once anyway the major didn't seem to have anything tosay. It was in the middle of a blistering, smothering hot forenoon inearly June, muggy and still and close, when a fellow breathing felt asthough he had his nose buried in layers of damp cotton waste. The cityroom was a place fit to addle eggs, and from the composing room at theback the stenches of melting metals and stale machine oils came rollingin to us in nasty waves. With his face glistening through the tricklingsweat, the major came in about ten o'clock, fanning himself with hishat, and when he spoke his greeting the booming note seemed all meltedand gone out of his voice. He went through the city room into the roombehind the partition, and passing through a minute later I saw himsitting there with one of Sidley's exchanges unfolded across his knee,but he wasn't reading it. Presently I saw him climbing laboriously upthe stairs to the second floor where the chief had his office. Atquitting time that afternoon I dropped into the place on the corner fora beer, and I was drinking it, as close to an electric fan as I couldget, when Devore came in and made for where I was standing. I asked himto have something.

  "I'll take the same," he said to the man behind the bar, and then to mewith a kind of explosive snap: "By George, I'm in a good mind to resignthis rotten job!" That didn't startle me. I had been in the businesslong enough to know that the average newspaper man is foreverthreatening to resign. Most of them--to hear them talk--are always juston the point of throwing up their jobs and buying a good-paying countryweekly somewhere and taking things easy for the rest of their lives, orelse they're going into magazine work. Only they hardly ever do it. SoDevore's threat didn't jar me much. I'd heard it too often.

  "What's the trouble?" I asked. "Heat getting on your nerves?"

  "No, it's not the heat," he said peevishly; "it's worse than the heat.Do you know what's happened? The chief has saddled Old Signal Corps onme. Yes, sir, I've got to take his old pet, the major, on the citystaff. It seems he's succeeded in losing what little property hehad--the chief told me some rigmarole about sudden financialreverses--and now he's down and out. So I'm elected. I've got to takehim on as a reporter--a cub reporter sixty-odd years old, mind you, whohasn't heard of anything worth while since Robert E. Lee surrendered!"

  The pathos of the situation--if you could call it that--hit me with ajolt; but it hadn't hit Devore, that was plain. He saw only the annoyingpart of it.

  "Wha
t's he going to do?" I asked--"assignments, or cover a route likethe district men?"

  "Lord knows," said Devore. "Because the old bore knows a lot of bigpeople in this town and is friendly with all the old-timers in thestate, the chief has a wild delusion that he can pick up a lot of stuffthat an ordinary reporter wouldn't get. Rats!

  "Come on, let's take another beer," he said, and then he added: "Well,I'll just make you two predictions. He'll be a total loss as areporter--that's one prediction; and the other is that he'll have a hardtime buying his provender and his toddies over at the Shawnee Club onthe salary he'll draw down from the Evening Press."

  Devore was not such a very great city editor, as I know now in the lightof fuller experience, but I must say that as a prophet he was fairlyaccurate. The major did have a hard time living on his salary--it wastwelve a week, I learned--and as a reporter he certainly was not whatyou would call a dazzling success. He came on for duty at eight the nextmorning, the same as the rest of us, and sorry as I felt for him I hadto laugh. He had bought himself a leather-backed notebook as big as ayoung ledger, just as a green kid just out of high school would havedone, and he had a long, new, shiny, freshly sharpened lead pencilsticking out of the breast pocket of his coat. He tried to come insmartly with a businesslike air, but it wouldn't have fooled a blindman, because he was as nervous as a debutante. It struck me as one ofthe funniest things--and one of the most pathetic--I had ever seen.

  I'll say this for Devore--he tried out the major on nearly every kind ofjob; and surely it wasn't Devore's fault that the major failed on everysingle one of them. His first attempt was as typical a failure as any ofthem. That first morning Devore assigned him to cover a wedding at highnoon, high noon being the phrase we always used for a wedding that tookplace round twelve o'clock in the day. The daughter of one of thewealthiest merchants in the town, and also one of our largestadvertisers, was going to be married to the first deputy cotillionleader of the German Club, or something of that nature. Anyhow the groomwas what is known as prominent in society, and the chief wanted a spreadmade of it. Devore sent the major out to cover the wedding, and when hecame back told him to write about half a column.

  He wrote half a column before he mentioned the bride's name. He startedoff with an eight-line quotation from Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake,and then he went into a long, flowery dissertation on the sacred rite orceremony of matrimony, proving conclusively and beyond the peradventureof a doubt that it was handed down to us from remote antiquity. And heforgot altogether to tell the minister's name, and he got the groom'smiddle initial wrong--he was the kind of groom who would make a fussover a wrong middle initial, too--and along toward the end of his storyhe devoted about three closely-written pages to the military history ofthe young woman's father. It seems that her parent had served withdistinction as colonel of a North Carolina regiment. And he wound upwith a fancy flourish and handed it in. I know all these details of hisstory, because it fell to me to rewrite it.

  Devore didn't say a word when the old major reverently laid that armloadof copy down in front of him. He just sat and waited in silence untilthe major had gone out to get a bite to eat, and then he undertook toedit it. But there wasn't any way to edit it, except to throw it away. Isuppose that kind of literature went very well indeed back along about1850; I remember having read such accounts in the back files of oldweeklies, printed before the war. But we were getting out a live, snappypaper. Devore tried to pattern the local side after the New York andChicago models. As yet we hadn't reached the point where we spoke of anywhite woman without the prefix Mrs. or Miss before her name, but we wereup-to-date in a good many other particulars. Why, it was even againstthe office rule to run "beauty and chivalry" into a story whendescribing a mixed assemblage of men and women; and when a Southernnewspaper bars out that ancient and honorable standby among phrases itis a sign that the old order has changed.

  For ten minutes or so Devore, cursing softly to himself, cut and choppedand gutted his way through the major's introduction, and betweenslashing strokes made a war map of the Balkans in his scalp with hisblue pencil. Then he lost patience altogether.

  "Here," he said to me, "you're not doing anything, are you? Well, takethis awful bunch of mushy slush and read it through, and then try tomake a decent half-column story out of it. And rush it over a page at atime, will you? We've got to hustle to catch the three o'clock editionwith it."

  Long before three o'clock the major was back in the shop, waiting forthe first run of papers to come off the press. Furtively I watched himas he hunted through the sticky pages to find his first story. I guesshe had the budding pride of authorship in him, just as all the rest ofus have it in us. But he didn't find his story, he found mine. He didn'tsay anything, but he looked crushed and forlorn as he got up and wentaway. It was like him not to ask for any explanations, and it was likeDevore not to offer him any.

  So it went. Even if he had grown up in the business I doubt whetherMajor Putnam Stone would ever have made a newspaper man; and now he wastoo far along in life to pick up even the rudiments of the trade. Hedidn't have any more idea of news values than a rabbit. He had the mostamazing faculty for overlooking what was vital in the news, but he couldalways be depended upon to pick out some trivial and inconsequentialdetail and dress it up with about half a yard of old-point laceadjectives. He never by any chance used a short word if he could dig upa long, hard one, and he never seemed to be able to start a storywithout a quotation from one of the poets. It never was a modern poeteither. Excepting for Sidney Lanier and Father Ryan, apparently hehadn't heard of any poet worth while since Edgar Allan Poe died. Andeverything that happened seemed to remind him--at great length--ofsomething else that had happened between 1861 and 1865. When it came tolugging the Civil War into a tale, he was as bad as that character inone of Dickens' novels who couldn't keep the head of King Charles theFirst out of his literary productions. With that reared-back,flat-heeled, stiff-spined gait of his, he would go rummaging round thehotels and the Shawnee Club, meeting all sorts of people and hearing allsorts of things that a real reporter would have snatched at like ahungry dog snatching at a T-bone, and then he would remember that itwas the fortieth anniversary of the Battle of Kenesaw Mountain, orsomething, and, forgetting everything else, would come bulging andbustling back to the office, all worked up over the prospect of writingtwo or three columns about that. He just simply couldn't get theviewpoint; yet I think he tried hard enough. I guess the man who saidyou couldn't teach an old dog new tricks had particular reference to anold war dog.

  I remember mighty well one incident that illustrates the point I amtrying to make. We had a Sunday edition. We were rather vain of ourSunday edition. It carried a colored comic supplement and a section fullof special features, and we all took a more or less righteous pride init and tried hard to make it alive and attractive. We didn't alwayssucceed, but we tried all right. One Saturday night we put the Sunday tobed, and about one o'clock, when the last form was locked, three or fourof us dropped into Tony's place at the corner for a bite to eat and adrink. We hadn't been there very long when in came the old major, and atmy invitation he joined us at one of Tony's little round tables at theback of the place. As a general thing the major didn't patronize Tony's.I had never heard him say so--probably he wouldn't have said it for fearof hurting our feelings--but I somehow had gathered the impression thatthe major believed a gentleman, if he drank at all, should drink at hisclub. But it was long after midnight now and the Shawnee Club would beclosed. Ike Webb spoke up presently.

  "It's a pity we couldn't dig up the governor tonight," he said.

  The governor had come down from the state capital about noon, and allthe afternoon and during most of the evening Webb had been trying tofind him. There was a possibility of a big story in the governor if Webbcould have found him. The major, who had been sitting there stirring histoddy in an absent-minded sort of way, spoke up casually: "I spent anhour with the governor tonight--at my club. In fact, I supped with himin one
of the private dining rooms." We looked up, startled, but themajor went right along. "Young gentlemen, it may interest you to knowthat every time I see our worthy governor I am struck more and more byhis resemblance to General Leonidas Polk, as that gallant soldier andgentleman looked when I last saw him----"

  Devore, who had been sitting next to the major, with his shoulder halfturned from the old man, swung round sharply and interrupted him.

  "Major," he said, with a thin icy stream of sarcasm trickling throughhis words, "did you and the governor by any remote chance discussanything so brutally new and fresh as the present politicalcomplications in this state?"

  "Oh, yes," said the major blandly. "We discussed them quite at somelength--or at least the governor did. Personally I do not take a greatinterest in these matters, not so great an interest as I should,perhaps, take. However, I did feel impelled to take issue with him onone point. Our governor is an honest gentleman--more than that, he was abrave soldier--but I fear he is mistaken in some of his attitudes. Iregard him as being badly advised. For example, he told me that nolonger ago than this afternoon he affixed his official signature to aveto of Senator Stickney's measure in regard to the warehouses of ourstate----"

  As Devore jumped up he overturned the major's toddy right in the major'slap. He didn't stop to beg pardon, though; in fact, none of us stopped.But at the door I threw one glance backward over my shoulder. The majorwas still sitting reared back in his chair, with his wasted toddyseeping all down the front of his billowy shirt, viewing our vanishingfigures with amazement and a mild reproof in his eyes. In the one quickglance that I took I translated his expression to mean something likethis:

  "Good Heavens, is this any way for a party of gentlemen to break up!This could never happen at a gentlemen's club."

  It was a foot-race back to the office, and Devore, who had the start,won by a short length. Luckily the distance was short, not quite half ablock, and the presses hadn't started yet. Working like the crew of asinking ship, we snatched the first page form back off the steam tableand pried it open and gouged a double handful of hot slugs out of thelast column--Devore blistered his fingers doing it. A couple of linotypeoperators who were on the late trick threw together the stick or two ofcopy that Webb and I scribbled off a line at a time. And while we weredoing this Devore framed a triple-deck, black-face head. So we missedonly one mail.

  The first page had a ragged, sloppy look, but anyway we were saved frombeing scooped to death on the most important story of the year. Thevetoing of the Stickney Bill vitally affected the tobacco interests, andthey were the biggest interests in the state, and half the people of thestate had been thinking about nothing else and talking about nothingelse for two months--ever since the extra session of the legislaturestarted. It was well for us too that we did save our faces, because theopposition sheet had managed to find the governor--he was stopping forthe night at the house of a friend out in the suburbs--and over thetelephone at a late hour he had announced his decision to them. But byMonday morning the major seemed to have forgotten the whole thing. Ithink he had even forgiven Devore for spilling his toddy and notstopping to apologize.

  As for Devore, he didn't say a word to the major--what would have beenthe use? To Devore's credit also I will say that he didn't run to thechief, bearing complaints of the major's hopeless incompetency. He kepthis tongue between his teeth and his teeth locked; and that must havebeen hard on Devore, for he was a flickery, high-tempered man, andnervous as a cat besides. To my knowledge, the only time he ever brokeout was when we teetotally missed the Castleton divorce story. So far asthe major's part in it was concerned, it was the Stickney veto story allover again, with variations. The Castletons were almost the richestpeople in town, and socially they stood way up. That made the scandalthat had been brewing and steeping and simmering for months all thebigger when finally it came to a boil. When young Buford Castleton gothis eyes open and became aware of what everybody else had known for ayear or more, and when the rival evening paper came out in its lastedition with the full particulars, we, over in the Evening Press shop,were plastered with shame, for we didn't have a line of it.

  A stranger dropping in just about that time would have been justified inthinking there was a corpse laid out in the plant somewhere, and thatall the members of the city staff were sitting up with the remains. Asluck would have it, it wasn't a stranger that dropped in on our grandlodge of sorrow. It was Major Putnam Stone, and as he entered the doorhe caught the tag end of what one of us was saying.

  "I gather," he said in that large round voice of his, "that you younggentlemen are discussing the unhappy affair which, I note, is mentionedwith such signally poor taste in the columns of our sensationalcontemporary. I may state that I knew of this contemplated divorceaction yesterday. Mr. Buford Castleton, Senior, was my informant."

  "What!" Devore almost yelled it. He had the love of a true city editorfor his paper, and the love of a mother for her child or a miser for hisgold is no greater love than that, let me tell you. "You knew about thisthing here?" He beat with two fingers that danced like the prongs of atuning fork on the paper spread out in front of him. "You knew ityesterday?"

  "Certainly," said the major. "The elder Mr. Castleton bared the trulydistressing details to me at the Shawnee Club."

  "In confidence though--he told you about it in confidence, didn't he,major?" said Ike Webb, trying to save the old fellow.

  But the major besottedly wouldn't be saved.

  "Absolutely not," he said. "There were several of us present, at leastthree other gentlemen whose names I cannot now recall. Mr. Castletonmade the disclosure as though he wished it to be known among hisfriends and his son's friends. It was quite evident to all of us that hewas entirely out of sympathy with the lady who is his daughter-in-law."

  Devore forced himself to be calm. It was almost as though he sat onhimself to hold himself down in his chair; but when he spoke his voiceran up and down the scales quiveringly.

  "Major," he said, "don't you think it would be a good idea if you wouldadmit that the Southern Confederacy was defeated, and turned yourattention to a few things that have occurred subsequently? Why didn'tyou write this story? Why didn't you tell me, so that I could write it?Why didn't----Oh, what's the use!"

  The major straightened himself up.

  "Sir," he said, "allow me to correct you in regard to a plainmisstatement of fact. Sir, the Southern Confederacy was never defeated.It ceased to exist as a nation because we were exhausted--because ourdevastated country was exhausted. Another thing, sir, I am employed uponthis paper, I gainsay you, as a reporter, not as a scandal monger. Iwould be the last to give circulation in the public prints to anothergentleman's domestic unhappiness. I regard it as highly improper that agentleman's private affairs should be aired in a newspaper under anycircumstances."

  And with that he bowed and turned on his heel and went out, leavingDevore shaking all over with the superhuman task of trying to holdhimself in. About ten minutes later, when I came out bound for myboarding house, the major was standing at the front door. He looped oneof his absurdly small fingers into one of my buttonholes.

  "Our city editor means well, no doubt," he said, "but he doesn'tunderstand, he doesn't appreciate our conceptions of these matters. Hewas born on the other side of the river, you know," he said as thoughthat explained everything. Then his tone changed and anxiety crept intoit. "Do you think that I went too far? Do you think I ought to return tohim and apologize to him for the somewhat hasty and abrupt manner ofspeech I used just now?"

  I told him no--I didn't know what might happen if he went back in therethen--and I persuaded him that Devore didn't expect any apology; andwith that he seemed better satisfied and walked off. As I stood therewatching him, his stiff old back growing smaller as he went away fromme, I didn't know which I blamed the more, Devore for his malignant,cold disdain of the major, or the major for his blatant stupidity. Andright then and there, all of a sudden, there came to me an understandingof a thing t
hat had been puzzling me all these weeks. Often I hadwondered how the major had endured Devore's contempt. I had decided inmy own mind that he must be blind to it, else he would have shownresentment. But now I knew the answer. The major wasn't blind, he wasafraid; as the saying goes, he was afraid of his job. He needed it; heneeded the little scrap of money it brought him every Saturday night.That was it, I knew now.

  Knowing it made me sorrier than ever for the old man. Dimly I began torealize, I think, what his own mental attitude toward his position mustbe. Here he was, a mere cub reporter--and a remarkably bad one, a provenfailure--skirmishing round for small, inconsequential items, runningerrands really, at an age when most of the men he knew were gettingready to retire from business. Yet he didn't dare quit. He didn't dareeven to rebel against the slights of the man over him, because he neededthat twelve dollars a week. It was all, no doubt, that stood between himand actual want. His pride was bleeding to death internally. On top ofall that he was being forced into a readjustment of his whole scheme ofthings, at a time of life when its ordered routine was almost as much apart of him as his hands and feet. As I figured it, he had long beforeadjusted his life to his income, cunningly fitting in certain smallluxuries and all the small comforts; and now this income was cut to athird or a quarter perhaps of its former dimensions. It seemed a prettyhard thing for the major. It was fierce.

  Perhaps my vision was clouded by my sympathy, but I thought Major Stoneaged visibly that summer. Maybe you have noticed how it is with men whohave gone along, hale and stanch, until they reach a certain age. Whenthey do start to break they break fast. He lost some of his flesh andmost of his rosiness. The skin on his face loosened a little and becamea tallowy yellowish-red, somewhat like a winter-killed apple.

  His wardrobe suffered. One day one of his short little shoes was splitacross the top just back of the toe cap, and the next morning it waspatched. Pretty soon the other shoe followed suit--first a crack in theleather, then a clumsy patch over the crack. He wore his black slouchhat until it was as green in spots as a gage plum; and late in August hesupplanted it with one of those cheap, varnished brown-straw hats thatcost about thirty-five cents apiece and look it.

  His linen must have been one of his small extravagances. Thosemajestically collared garments with the tremendous plaited bosoms andthe hand worked eyelets, where the three big flat gold studs went in,never came ready made from any shop. They must have been built to hismeasure and his order. Now he wore them until there were gaped placesbetween the plaits where the fine, fragile linen had ripped lengthwise,and the collars were frayed down and broken across and caved in limply.Finally he gave them up too, and one morning came to work wearing aflimsy, sleazy, negligee shirt. I reckon you know the kind of shirt Imean--always it fits badly, and the sleeves are always short and thebosom is skimpy, and the color design is like bad wall-paper. After hisold full-bosomed grandeur this shirt, with a ten-cent collar buttoned onto it and overriding the neckband, and gaping away in the front so thatthe major's throat showed, seemed to typify more than anything else thedays upon which he had fallen. About this time I thought his voice tookon a changed tone permanently. It was still hollow, but it no longerrang.

  A good many men similarly placed would have taken to drink, but MajorPutnam Stone plainly was never born to be a drunkard and hard timescouldn't make one of him. With a sort of gentle, stupid persistence hehung fast to his poor job, blundering through some way, strugglingconstantly to learn the first easy tricks of the trade--the a, b, c's ofit--and never succeeding. He still lugged the classical poets and thewar into every story he tried to write, and day after day Devoremaintained his policy of eloquent brutal silence, refusing dumbly toaccept the major's clumsy placating attempts to get upon a betterfooting with him. After that once he had never attempted to scold theold man, but he would watch the major pottering round the city room,and he would chew on his under lip and viciously lance his scalp withhis pencil point.

  Well, aside from the major, Devore had his troubles that summer. Thatwas the summer of the biggest, bitterest campaign that the state hadseen, so old-timers said, since Breckinridge ran against Douglas andboth of them against Lincoln. If you have ever lived in the South,probably you know something of political fights that will divide a stateinto two armed camps, getting hotter and hotter until old slumberinganimosities come crawling out into the open, like poison snakes fromunder a rock, and new lively ones hatch from the shell every hour or soin a multiplying adder brood.

  This was like that, only worse. Stripped of a lot of embroidery in theshape of side issues and local complications, it resolved itself in alast-ditch, last-stand, back-to-the-wall fight of the old regime of theparty against the new. On one side were the oldsters, bearers of famousnames some of them, who had learned politics as a trade and followed itas a profession. Almost to a man they were professional office holders,professional handshakers, professional silver tongues. And against themwere pitted a greedy, hungry group of younger men, less showy perhaps intheir persons, less picturesque in their manner of speech, but filledeach one with a great yearning for office and power; and they brought tothe aid of their vaulting ambitions a new and a faultlessly runningmachine. From the outset the Evening Press had championed the cause ofthe old crowd--the state-house ring as the enemy called it, when theydidn't call it something worse. We championed it not as a Northern or anEastern paper might, in a sedate, half-hearted way, but fiercely andwholly and blindly--so blindly that we could see nothing in our ownfaction but what was good and high and pure, nothing in the other butwhat was smutted with evil intent. In daily double-leaded editorialcolumns the chief preached a Holy War, and in the local pages we foughtthe foe tooth and nail, biting and gouging and clawing, and they gougedand clawed back at us like catamounts. That was where the hard work fellupon Devore. He had to keep half his scanty staff working on politicswhile the other half tried to cover the run of the news.

  If I live to be a thousand years old I am not going to forget the stateconvention that began at two o'clock that muggy September afternoon atLyric Hall up on Washington Street in the old part of the town. Onceupon a time, twenty or thirty years before, Lyric Hall had been thebiggest theater in town. The stage was still there and the boxes, and atthe back there were miles--they seemed miles anyway--of ancient,crumbling, dauby scenery stacked up and smelling of age and decay. Boothand Barrett had played there, and Fanny Davenport and Billy Florence.Now, having fallen from its high estate, it served alteredpurposes--conventions were held at Lyric Hall and cheap masquerade ballsand the like.

  The press tables that had been provided were not, strictly speaking,press tables at all. They were ordinary unpainted kitchen tables, rangedtwo on one side and two on the other side at the front of the stage,close up to the old gas-tipped footlights; and when we came in by theback way that afternoon and found our appointed places I was struck bycertain sinister facts. Usually women flocked to a state convention. Byrights there should have been ladies in the boxes and in the balcony.Now there wasn't a woman in sight anywhere, only men, row after row ofthem. And there wasn't any cheering, or mighty little of it. When I tellyou the band played Dixie all the way through with only a stray whoopnow and then, you will understand better the temper of that crowd.

  The situation, you see, was like this: One side had carried the mountainend of the state; the other had carried the lowlands. One side had sweptthe city; that meant a solid block of more than a hundred delegates. Theother side had won the small towns and the inland counties. So it stoodlowlander against highlander, city man against country man, and thebitter waters of those ancient feuds have their wellsprings back athousand years in history, they tell me. One side led slenderly oninstructed vote. The other side had enough contesting delegations onhand to upset the result if these contestants or any considerableproportion of them should be recognized in the preliminary organization.

  One side held a majority of the delegates who sat upon the floor; theother side had packed the balcony and the aisles
and the corners withits armed partizans. One side was in the saddle and determined; theother afoot and grimly desperate. And it was our side, as I shall callit, meaning by that the state-house ring, that for the moment had thewhiphand; and it was the other side, led in person by State SenatorStickney, god of the new machine, that stood ready to wade hip deepthrough trouble to unhorse us.

  Just below me, stretching across the hall from side to side in favoredfront places, sat the city delegates--Stickney men all of them. And asmy eye swept the curved double row of faces it seemed to me I saw thereevery man in town with a reputation as a gun-fighter or a knife-fighteror a fist-fighter; and every one of them wore, pinning his delegate'sbadge to his breast, a Stickney button that was round and bright red,like a clot of blood on his shirt front.

  They made a contrast, these half-moon lines of blocky men, to the lank,slouch-hatted, low-collared country delegates--farmers, schoolteachers, country doctors and country lawyers--who filled the seatsbehind them and on beyond them. To the one group politics was a businessin which there was money to be made and excitement to be had; to theother group it was a passion, veritably a sacredly high and seriousthing, which they took as they did their religion, with a solemn,intolerant, Calvinistic sincerity. There was one thing, though, they allshared in common. Whether a man's coat was of black alpaca or stripedflannel, the right-hand pocket sagged under the weight of unseenironmongery; or if the coat pocket didn't sag there was a bulging clumpback under the skirts on the right hip. For all the heat, hardly a manthere was in his shirtsleeves; and it would have been funny to watch howcarefully this man or that eased himself down into his seat, favoringhis flanks against the pressure of his hardware--that is to say, itwould have been funny if it all hadn't been so deadly earnest.

  You could fairly smell trouble cooking in that hall. In any corneralmost there were the potential makings of half a dozen prominentfunerals. There was scarce a man, I judged, but nursed a private grudgeagainst some other man; and then besides these there was the big issueitself, which had split the state apart lengthwise as a butcher'scleaver splits a joint. Looking out over that convention, you couldread danger spelled out everywhere, in everything, as plain as print.

  I was where I could read it with particular and uncomfortabledistinctness, too, for I had the second place at the table that had beenassigned to the Evening Press crew. There were four of us inall--Devore, who had elected to be in direct charge of the detail; IkeWebb, our star man, who was to handle the main story; I who was to writethe running account--and, fourthly and lastly, Major Putnam Stone. Themajor hadn't been included in the assignment originally, but littlePinky Gilfoil had turned up sick that morning, and the chief decided themajor should come along with us in Gilfoil's place. The chief had adeluded notion that the major could circulate on a roving commission andpick up spicy scraps of gossip. But here, for this once anyway, was aconvention wherein there were no spicy bits of gossip to be pickedup--curse words, yes, and cold-chilled fighting words, but notgossip--everything focused and was summed up in the one main point:Should the majority rule the machine or should the machine rule themajority? So the major sat there at the far inside corner of the tabledoing nothing at all--Devore saw to that--and was rather in the way. Forthe time I forgot all about him.

  The clash wasn't long in coming. It came on the first roll call of thecounties. Later we found out that the Stickney forces had beencounting, all along, on throwing the convention into a disorder of suchproportions as to force an adjournment, trusting then to theiracknowledged superiority at organization to win some strong strategicadvantage in the intervening gap of time. Failing there they meant toraise a cry of unfairness and walk out. That then was theirprogram--first the riot and then, as a last resort, the bolt. But theyhad men in their ranks, high-tempered men who, like so many skittishcolts, wouldn't stand without hitching. The signals crossed and thethunder cracked across that calm-before-the-storm situation before therewas proper color of excuse either for attack or for retreat.

  It came with scarcely any warning at all. Old Judge Marcellus Barbee,the state chairman, called the convention to order, he standing at alittle table in the center of the stage. Although counted as our man,the judge was of such uncertain fiber as to render it doubtful whose manhe really was. He was a kindly, wind-blown old gentleman, who very muchagainst his will had been drawn unawares, as it were, into the middle ofthis fight, and he was bewildered by it all--and not only bewildered butunhappy and frightened. His gavel seemed to quaver its raps outtimorously.

  A pastor of one of the churches, a reverend man with a bleak, worriedface, prayed the Good Lord that peace and good-will and wise counselmight rule these deliberations, and then fled away as though fearing themocking echoes of his own Amen. Summoning his skulking voice out of hislower throat, Judge Barbee bade the secretary of the state committeecall the counties. The secretary got as far as Blanton, the third countyalphabetically down the list. And Blanton was one of the contestedcounties. So up rose two rival chairmen of delegations, each wavingaloft his credentials, each demanding the right to cast the vote of freeand sovereign Blanton, each shaking a clenched fist at the other. Up gotthe rival delegations from Blanton. Up got everybody. Judge Barbee, witha gesture, recognized the rights of the anti-Stickney delegation. Jeersand yells broke out, spattering forth like a skirmish fire, then almostinstantly were merged into a vast, ominous roar. Chairs began tooverturn. Not twenty feet from me the clattering of the chairman'sgavel, as he vainly beat for order, sounded like the clicking of atelegraph instrument in a cyclone.

  I saw the sergeant-at-arms--who was our man too--start down the middleaisle and saw him trip over a hostile leg and stumble and fall, and Isaw a big mountaineer drop right on top of him, pinning him flat to thefloor. I saw the musicians inside the orchestra rail, almost under myfeet, scuttling away in two directions like a divided covey of gorgeousblue and red birds. I saw the snare drummer, a little round German, puthis foot through the skin roof of his own drum. I saw Judge Barbeeoverturn the white china pitcher of ice water that sweated on the tableat his elbow, and as the cold stream of its contents spattered down thelegs of his trousers saw him staring downward, contemplating hisdrenched limbs as though that mattered greatly.

  All in a flash I saw these things, and in that same flash I saw, takingshape and impulse, a groundswell of men, all wearing red buttons,rolling toward the stage, with the picked bad men of the city wards forits crest; and out of the tail of my eye I saw too, stealing out fromthe rear of the stage, a small, compact wedge of men wearing those samered buttons; and the prow of the wedge was Fighting Dave Dancy, theofficial bad man of a bad county, a man who packed a gun on each hip andcarried a dirk knife down the back of his neck; a man who would shootyou at the drop of a hat and provide the hat himself--or at least so itwas said of him.

  And I realized that the enemy, coming by concerted agreement from frontand rear at once, had nipped those of us who were upon the stage asbetween two closing walls, and I was exceedingly unhappy to be there. Iducked my head low, waiting for the shooting to begin. Afterward wefigured it out that nobody fired the first shot because everybody knewthe first shot would mean a massacre, where likely enough a man wouldkill more friends than foes.

  What happened now in the space of the next few seconds I saw withparticular clarity of vision, because it happened right alongside me andin part right over me. I recall in especial Mink Satterlee. MinkSatterlee was one of the worst men in town, and he ran the worst saloonand prevailed mightily in ward politics. He had been sitting just belowour table in the front row of seats. He was a big-bodied man,fat-necked, but this day he showed himself quick on his feet as anytoe-dancer. Leading his own forces by a length, he vaulted the orchestrarail and lit lightly where a scared oboe player had been squatted amoment before; Mink breasted the gutterlike edging of the footlights andleaped upward, teetering a moment in space. One of his hands grabbed outfor a purchase and closed on the leg of our table and jerked it almostfrom under us.

/>   At that Devore either lost his head or else indignation made himreckless. Still half sitting, he kicked out at the wriggling bulk at hisfeet, and the toe of his shoe took Mink Satterlee in his chest. It was apuny enough kick; it didn't even shake Mink Satterlee loose from wherehe clung. He gave a bellow and heaved himself up on the stage and,before any of us could move, grabbed Devore by the throat with his lefthand and jammed him back, face upward, on the table until I thoughtDevore's spine would crack. His right hand shot into his coat pocket,then, quick as a snake, came out again, showing the fat fist armed witha set of murderously heavy brass knucks, and he bent his arm in acrooked sickle-like stroke, aiming for Devore's left temple. I've alwaysbeen satisfied--and so has Devore--that if the blow had landed true hisskull would have caved in like a puff-ball. Only it never landed.

  Above me a shadow of something hung for the hundredth part of a second,something white flashed over me and by me, moving downward whizzingly;something cracked on something; and Mink Satterlee breathed a gentlelittle grunt right in Devore's face and then relaxed and slid down onthe floor, lying half under the table and half in the tin trough wherethe stubby gas jets of the footlights stood up, with his legs protrudingstiffly out over its edge toward his friends. Subconsciously I notedthat his socks were not mates, one of them being blue and one black;also that his scalp had a crescent-shaped split place in it just betweenand above his half-closed eyes. All this, though, couldn't have takenone-fifth of the time it has required for me to tell it. It couldn'thave taken more than a brace of seconds, but even so it was time enoughfor other things to happen; and I looked back again toward the center ofthe stage just as Fighting Dave Dancy seized startled old Judge Barbeeby the middle from behind and flung him aside so roughly that the oldman spun round twice, clutching at nothing, and then sat down very hard,yards away from where he started spinning.

  Dancy stooped for the gavel, which had fallen from the judge's hand,being minded, I think, to run the convention awhile in the interest ofhis own crowd. But his greedy fingers never closed over its black-walnuthandle, because, facing him, he saw just then what made him freeze solidwhere he was.

  Out from behind the Evening Press table and through a scattering huddleof newspaper reporters, stepping on the balls of his feet as lightly asa puss-cat, emerged Major Putnam Stone. His sleeves were turned back offhis wrists and his vest flared open. His head was thrust forward so thatthe tuft of goatee on his chin stuck straight out ahead of him like alittle burgee in a fair breeze. His face was all a clear, bright,glowing pink; and in his right hand he held one of the longest cavalryrevolvers that ever was made, I reckon. It had a square-butted ivoryhandle, and as I saw that ivory handle I knew what the white thing wasthat had flashed by me only a moment before to fell Mink Satterlee soexpeditiously.

  Writing this, I've been trying to think of the one word that would bestdescribe how Major Putnam Stone looked to me as he advanced on DaveDancy. I think now that the proper word is competent, for indeed the oldmajor did look most competent--the tremendous efficiency he radiatedfilled him out and made him seem sundry sizes larger than he really was.A great emergency acts upon different men as chemical processes act upondifferent metals. Some it melts like lead, so that their resolutionsoftens and runs away from them; and some it hardens to tempered steel.There was the old major now. Always before this he had seemed to me tobe but pot metal and putty, and here, poised, alert, ready--awire-drawn, hard-hammered Damascus blade of a man--all changed andtransformed and glorified, he was coming down on Dave Dancy, finger ontrigger, thumb on hammer, eye on target, dominating the whole scene.

  Ten feet from him he halted and there was nobody between them. Somehoweverybody else halted too, some even giving back a little. Over the edgeof the stage a ring of staring faces, like a high-water mark, showedwhere the onward rushing swell of the Stickney city delegates hadchecked itself. Seemingly to all at once came the realization that thedestinies of the fight had by the chances of the fight been entrusted tothese two men--to Dancy and the major--and that between them the issuewould be settled one way or the other.

  Still at a half crouch, Dancy's right hand began to steal back under theskirt of his long black coat. At that the major flung up the muzzle ofhis weapon so that it pointed skyward, and he braced his left arm at hisside in the attitude you have seen in the pictures of dueling scenes ofolden times.

  "I am waiting, sir, for you to draw," said the major quite briskly. "Iwill shoot it out with you to see whether right or might shall controlthis convention." And his heels clicked together like castanets.

  Dancy's right hand kept stealing farther and farther back. And then youcould mark by the change of his skin and by the look out of his eyes howhis courage was clabbering to whey inside him, making his face a milky,curdled white, the color of a poorly stirred emulsion, and then hequit--he quit cold--his hand came out again from under his coat tailsand it was an empty hand and wide open. It was from that moment on thatthroughout our state Fighting Dave Dancy ceased to be Fighting Dave andbecame instead Yaller Dave.

  "Then, sir," said the major, "as you do not seem to care to shoot it outwith me, man to man, you and your friends will kindly withdraw from thisstage and allow the business of this convention to proceed in an orderlymanner."

  And as Dave Dancy started to go somebody laughed. In another second wewere all laughing and the danger was over. When an American crowdbegins laughing the danger is always over.

  * * * * *

  Newspaper men down in that town still talk about the story that Ike Webbwrote for the last edition of the Evening Press that afternoon. It was agreat story, as Ike Webb told it--how, still sitting on the floor, oldJudge Barbee got his wits back and by word of mouth commissioned themajor a special sergeant-at-arms; how the major privily sent men toclose and lock and hold the doors so that the Stickney people couldn'tget out to bolt, even if they had now been of a mind to do so; how theconvention, catching the spirit of the moment, elected the major itstemporary chairman, and how even after that, for quite a spell, untilsome of his friends bethought to remove him, Mink Satterlee sleptpeacefully under our press table with his mismated legs bridged acrossthe tin trough of the footlights.

  * * * * *

  In rapid succession a number of unusual events occurred in the EveningPress shop the next morning. To begin with, the chief came down early.He had a few words in private with Devore and went upstairs. When themajor came at eight as usual, Devore was waiting for him at the door ofthe city room; and as they went upstairs together, side by side, I sawDevore's arm steal timidly out and rest a moment on the major'sshoulder.

  The major was the first to descend. Walking unusually erect, even forhim, he bustled into the telephone booth. Jessie, our operator, told usafterward that he called up a haberdasher, and in a voice that boomedlike a bell ordered fourteen of those plaited-bosom shirts of his, thesame to be made up and delivered as soon as possible. Then he stalkedout. And in a minute or two more Devore came down looking happy andunhappy and embarrassed and exalted, all of them at once. On his way tohis desk he halted midway of the floor.

  "Gentlemen," he said huskily--"fellows, I mean--I've got an announcementto make, or rather two announcements. One is this: Right here before youfellows who heard most of them I want to take back all the mean things Iever said about him--about Major Stone--and I want to say I'm sorry forall the mean things I've done to him. I've tried to beg his pardon, buthe wouldn't listen--he wouldn't let me beg his pardon--he--he saideverything was all right. That's one announcement. Here's the other: Themajor is going to have a new job with this paper. He's going to leavethe city staff. Hereafter he's going to be upstairs in the room next tothe chief. He's gone out now to pick out his own desk. He's going towrite specials for the Sunday--specials about the war. And he's goingto do it on a decent salary too."

  I judge by my own feelings that we all wanted to cheer, but didn'tbecause we thought it might sound theatrical and foolis
h. Anyhow, I knowthat was how I felt. So there was a little awkward pause.

  "What's his new title going to be?" asked somebody then.

  "The title is appropriate--I suggested it myself," said Devore. "MajorStone is going to be war editor."