CHAPTER I

Although the western windows were open, it was decidedly warm in the offices of the _Weekly Torch_. The offices were on the tenth floor in one of the town's best known sky-scrapers--the Aurora. There was a view, through the windows, of innumerable roofs and streets; here and there the tower of a railway station or a new hotel protruded--in the words of A.B. Wooton owner of the _Torch_--"like a sore thumb." Mr. Wooton was at that moment engaged in the diverting pastime of having his feet stretched over the side of his desk; and watching the smoke of his cigarette curl out of the window. Besides his own, there were three other desks, of the roller-top pattern, in the room, the door of which was marked "Editorial Rooms," but was rarely, if ever, seen closed. As a usual thing the outer door to the corridor was, in the summer-time at least, also left wide open; you could see from the window clear to the outer door. Indeed, it was one of Wooten's special talents, this ability of his to see at a glance, from his seat by the window, who it was that was coming in through the farther door. At one of the other desks a man was smoking a pipe and shoving a pencil rapidly over sheet of paper. Presently this man laid his pencil down, took his pipe out of his mouth and knocked the ashes over into the cuspidor. Then he leaned back in his chair and inquired,

"Who was it?"

"Young fellow from the Art Institute," said Wooten. "Sketches to show; wants to do illustrating; same old gag. They all come to it. Paint and fame come altogether too high, and a fellow's got to live. Although, as the Frenchman remarked, '_Je ne vois pahs la nécessité_.'" The ability to hideously mispronounce French with a sort of bravado that almost made it seem correct was one of Wooten's peculiarities.

The other man gave a mock shudder. "If your morals," he said, "were as bad as your French, you wouldn't be fit to print. Was his stuff any good?"

"Very fair. Got a thing or two to learn about working for reproduction, as all these art-school men have; but he's got it in him. I told him to go and see young Belden, on the _Chronicle_, to get a few points about reproduction. I believe I'll be able to use him. If he's cheap." Wooton laughed, and threw the stub of his cigarette out of the window. Then he began throwing the papers on his desk all in a heap and looking into, under and around them. "Confound the luck," he began; then, turning to the other man, "Got a cigarette, Van?"

Van, whose full name was Vanstruther, and whom his intimates called alternately "Tom" and "Van," threw a box over to the other's desk, laughing. "I swear," he said, "it's my firm belief that if a man were to put you in a story and try to draw you with a single stroke he would only have to say that you spent your life between buying and losing cigarettes."

"And matches," added the other calmly. "Got one?"

"Jupiter! If this thing goes on I'm going to strike for higher rates. It's not in the contract that I furnish the office with smokes!"

"No. But the stuff you write, Van, is what drives me to cigarettes. So you make your own bed, you see. Hallo! Here's alone female to see me! Wonder who?"

He got up and went towards the door. "Did you wish to see me?" he inquired.

"The editor?" She hesitated a little but he assured her with a slight nod that she had found her man, and she followed him towards his desk. She took a seat beside him, and they began conversing in a tone so low that Vanstruther could only catch a stray word now and again. Presently she got up. "Very well then," she was saying, "you have my address; if anything should turn up, you will let me know, won't you?" With a little rustling of skirts she was gone. Presently they could here her voice saying "Down!" to the elevator boy.

"What was her game?" asked Vanstruther.

"Wanted to contribute poetry as a regular department. You can't fling a club around a corner anywhere in this town without hitting one of her kind, nowadays!"

"Then why didn't you tell her right away you weren't using anything of that sort?"

"Why, you infernal idiot, didn't you look at her?"

"No. Choice?"

"Very." He put a slip of paper into a pigeon hole, remarking as he did so, "Filed for future reference."

From the next room came a gruff voice, "Column of editorial to fill yet, Mr. Wooton."

"That foreman of mine's like Banquo's ghost," muttered Wooton, as he put his pen into the ink and bent down over the desk. For a while there was only the sound of pen and pencil going over paper, and the click of the type in the next room. Then there was a heavy step heard in the passage outside, and presently Wooton muttered: "The Lord's giving us this day our daily loafers, I see. I wonder why it is," he went on aloud, as a tall, heavy-set man, with a military mustache and eyeglasses in front of mild blue eyes, came into the room, "that you fellows always show up on Friday. Which, being the day we go to press--what's that? More copy? Oh, all right!" The foreman was taking all the written sheets from his desk and pleading for more. The new comer was evidently used to this sort of greeting; he calmly picked a cigarette from the box on Vanstruther's desk, lit it and sat down on a chair that was drawn up to the table-where the "exchanges" lay piled in heaps. He finally found what he had been apparently looking for--a paper with a very gaudy and risky picture on the front of the cover; he folded it to his satisfaction and began to look through it. "Say, Van," he began, presently, "what's this I hear about their going to play the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play here? Anything in it?"

Vanstruther was terribly busy. "Haven't heard," was all he said.

"I heard that it was all fixed," the other went on. "They've even got the man to play the leading part. Fellow called Tom Vanstruther. They say he's going to play the part without a makeup, and--"

"Oh, look here," said Vanstruther, half turning around in his chair, "you go to the devil, will you?"

The other man took out a huge cigar-holder, inserted his cigarette and curled his mustache. "Van's still a little sore about that," he said, turning to Wooton, who merely nodded his head. There came again the sound of footsteps in the outer hall, and Wooton, peering forward a little, broke into a cheery "Hallo, Dante Gabriel Belden, glad to see you! Come in. By the way, I just sent a young fellow who has your disease over to see you this morning. Wants to learn the reproduction rules of the game. See him?"

"Yes. Had a little talk with him. Clever chap. Tell you about him in a minute. Hallo, Van, how are the other three hundred and ninety-nine? Hallo, Stanley, haven't they got you under the vagrancy ordinance yet?"

The man with the huge mustache and the lengthy cigar-holder shook his head and said, "Not yet. But I understand they're on the trail. Well, how is Art, and what are the books you have lately bought, and what is the latest of your schemes that has died?"

"Oh, give them to me one at a time. Hang it, Wooton, why do you allow this man to come up here, anyway, to wear out your furniture and the patience of us all?"

"Oh," said Wooton, "he's an amusing animal, and I forgive any man anything if only he will amuse me."

"That's beastly bad morals!" said the artist.

"Morals!" echoed Wooton, with a bland smile, "my dear boy, you want to take a pill. No; take two! Morals in this day and age; moreover, on the borders of Bohemia, to talk about morals! Jove, I see myself forced to seek the solace of the deadly cigarette." He lit one of those slender rolls of tobacco and paper and went on, "However you haven't answered Stanley's questions yet. For you must know, Van, that Belden is one of the most extravagant and insatiable hunters of art books in all this town. Ever been in his flat? Well, it's a series of rooms, completely lined with books and pictures, with a very small hole in the middle of each room. Said hole being usually filled--to use an Irishism--with a center-table loaded to the guards with art portfolios. I don't believe there's a book or art store in town that the man doesn't owe large bills to; and I know, for a fact, that when it comes to be a question between a new overcoat and a new art book, he always takes the latter. And as for his schemes--well, I will admit they're all good, but, like the good, they die young. While they have the merit of exceeding novelty, they ride him like the plague; but presently a new idol comes and the old one falls into decay. Tell us, Dante, about the newest scheme!"

"H'm," replied the artist, "I don't see that you've left me anything to tell. I've got a new book of Vierge's stuff that you fellows want to come up and see one of these days; that's about all that I can think of."

"Thank you for the pressing invitation," said Wooton.

"Oh, and about that fellow you sent up to see me," Belden continued, "I liked his stuff immensely. He needs a little experience and hard luck on the practical side of getting his stuff made into cuts, and he'll be all right. The fact is, Wooton, seeing you like the fellow's sketches fairly well, and I'm rushed to death with other work, I've thought of turning my work for the Torch over to him. Would you object?"

"Not a bit, provided he does it as well; and he won't have to get much of a move on to do that. And then they're cheaper when they're green!"

Belden groaned. "You're the most awful specimen of materialism I ever hope to run up against. Then you don't object to this fellow--what's his name again, Lancaster, isn't it?--doing your sketches? All right, I'll train him a bit for you. And then I guess it would be a good scheme for him to have a desk here in your office somewhere, so that he can have a workshop and be right at hand for you. It isn't as if he had a studio of his own."

"That'll be all right; we've got plenty of room. But while you're training him, old man, I hope you won't inoculate him with that villainous style of dressing you adopt at the end of your pen. You're very hot people on everything that's got to be done in a hurry, and you're great on fine work of the etching order, but when it comes to making people look like the men and women one would care to be seen with, you're simply not in this county, that's all there is about it. I've always claimed, you know," he went on, turning a little so that he faced Vanstruther and Stanley, "that the great fault common to all the black-and-white artists in this town was that they couldn't define the difference between a gentleman and a hoodlum. They talk to me about technique, and drawing, and all the rest of it, none of which, I will admit, I know a mortal thing about; but all I answer is that I'm going from the point of view of the man who doesn't know how the drawing is made, but who does know how it looks when it's finished. The people of today look at nearly everything for it's merely superficial aspect; and the finer people look to our artists to display taste in clothing their pictorial creatures. If you only dress your people well, they'll want your drawings so that they can get fashion pointers from them. Now-a-days an illustrator has got to be more than a mere manipulator of pen and ink; he has got to keep an eye on the fashions, and even a little ahead of them. At least, that's what the man I'm looking for should be."

Stanley muttered, around the edges of his mustache, so that only Vanstruther could hear, "Yes; and he'd want to pay him as much as ten dollars a week!"

Belden laughed, and got up. "Why don't you put all that into a lecture, Wooton, and give the fellows over at the Institute a glimpse of this higher knowledge of yours. However, I've got to be going. I'll send that man Lancaster over here in a day or so. Goodbye, people!"

"There's one of the cleverest fellows with a pen in this town," said Wooten, as soon as the artist's footsteps had died away down the corridor, "but he's utterly spoiled himself by the work he's been doing of late years. He's a very fast worker, and one of the best men a daily paper ever got hold of. Then, too, I've seen copy-work of his--that is, from photographs or paintings--done in pen-and-ink, that had all the fine detail and effect of an etching. But, for the sake of the money there is in it, he does blood and thunder illustrations for a paper of that sort. After a man has done that sort of thing for a year or two, it gets into his style. I don't believe he'll ever be able to do anything else, now. Of course, he'll aways make good money, because his speed and capacity for work are simply invaluable; but art, as far as he is concerned, must be weeping large salty tears."

"This picture of you, A.B. Wooton, pleading the cause of art," remarked Stanley, "is one of the most affecting I have ever beheld. It really makes me feel--hungry."

"Your invitation, sir," said Wooton, walking over toward the closet and getting his hat, "is cordially accepted. Come on, Van; we are invited to lunch by the Honorable Mr. Stanley, exchange reader to the _Torch_. Never linger in a case like this!"

"For consummate nerve," Stanley suggested, "you really take the medal, A.B. However, seeing I made a little borrow from the old lady yesterday, I will go you one lunch on the strength of it. But I do hope you men had late breakfasts."

Just before they were ready to pass out, Tony, the office boy came in. "Say," he said to Wooton, in a low tone, "you remember that letter I took to the house day before yesterday? Well, does the quarter walk to-day?"

"Which," Wooton explained, as he handed the boy a quarter, "is Tony's peculiar way of inquiring whether he is going to get that twenty-five cents or not." Tony grinned and went back to his desk were he was busy addressing wrappers.

When the three men came back from lunch, they found a young man, holding a black leather case in his hand, such as bank messengers carry, sitting patiently in a chair in the outer office. He got up when they entered, and handed Wooton a paper. Wooton took it to the light, read it slowly, and handed it back. "Tell him to send that around again on the tenth, will you." Then he walked into the composing room and began talking to the foreman. The collector put the slip of paper back into his portfolio and went out.

"Van," said Wooton, as they sat down at his desk, presently, "I wish you'd try and hurry that stuff of yours along a little, will you? I've got to go to a tea at Mrs. Stewart's at four, and the ghost tells me that your page is half a column shy yet."

Vanstruther nodded silently, while Stanley inquired, "Excuse my ignorance Mr. Wooten, but who is Mrs. Stewart?"

"What? You don't know the great and only Annie McCallum Stewart? Oh, misericordia, can such things be?"

"They are."

"Well, Mrs. Stewart is a remarkably clever woman. One of the cleverest women our society affords, in fact. She is the daughter of one of the town's best known and most popular doctors, and everyone in society knew her so well when she was only Annie McCallum that now, when she is married to Stewart, one still uses her old name as well as her new one. That's all the result of individuality. She has read a great deal, and kept her eyes open a great deal. She has a husband who is ridiculously fond of her, and otherwise as blind as a bat. She, on the other hand, has a mania for young men. Whenever you see her with a young man of any sort of looks, somebody will tell you that Annie McCallum Stewart has got a new youth in the net. She likes to lure them up into her 'den,' as she calls it, and talk to them about the higher life. Then they fall in love with her and she forgives them and elaborates upon the beauties of pure Platonism. In a word, Stanley, she's one of the most perfect forms of the mental flirt I ever come across."

"H'm. Is your tea today to be in duet form, or is it a general scramble?"

"Oh, it's a general all-comers' game. But I always like to go to that house; she interests me immensely. I'm always wondering how near she really can skate to the edge without breaking over."

"Yes," acquiesced the other, reflectively, "that is an interesting speculation. Hallo, here's another friend of yours!"

The new-comer laid an envelope on Wooton's desk and waited. The latter opened it hastily, and then said, "I sent that down by this morning's mail."

The man had hardly gone before Stanley laid down the paper he had been paging through and said, looking steadily at Wooton, "Jupiter, but you do that easily! If I could do that only half as well I'd count myself as free from debts for the rest of my life. It's my solemn belief that you can tell a collector from an ordinary mortal as soon as he steps inside the door. I've heard you tell a man, who had only just turned inside the outer office, that you were 'going to send that down in the morning,' and I've seen you look the enemy calmly in the face and tell him that you had fixed that up with his employer about an hour ago. And you do it as easily as if you were lighting a cigarette. Another man might get embarrassed, and hesitate, or feel guilty! But you! Not in a hundred years! You never quail worth a cent. It's positive genius, my boy, positive genius!"

"No; it's only business, that's all."

"H'm, by the way, speaking of business, aren't you running the game a trifle extravagantly here? I don't want to mix in, of course, but is the thing paying so well as--"

The other interrupted him. "My dear fellow," he said, "it's evident you haven't any idea how well this thing is paying. Why, man, look at me! Do I economise much? No. Well, I don't have to, that's why! But come on and let's saunter down street. Van's finished, and they've got all the copy they want, and I expect there are a few pretty girls out today. Let's go and take a glimpse at the parade on the Avenue. And then I'll go down to that tea."

There were several callers at the office after they had left; some bill-collectors, a society man who left the announcement for some forthcoming dances; a boy to buy ten copies of last week's paper; a printer looking for work; and the mail-carrier. Towards six o'clock the foreman and the compositors left; then Tony, the office-boy, shut up his desk, and went out, locking the door behind him. The Weekly Torch had gone to rest for the day.