Chapter 22

AGNES FINDS BOBBY A SLING AND BOBBY PUTS A STONE IN IT

The wonderful change in a girl who, through her love, has become all woman, that was the marvel to Bobby; the breadth of her knowledge, the depth of her sympathy, the boundlessness of her compassionate forgiveness, her quality of motherliness; and this last was perhaps the greatest marvel of all. Yet even his marveling did not encompass all the wonder. In his last exploit, more full of folly than anything into which he had yet blundered, and the one which, of all others, might most have turned her from him, Agnes had had the harder part; to sit at home and wait, to dread she knew not what. The certainty which finally evolved had less of distress in it than not to know while day by day passed by. One thing had made it easier: never for one moment had she lost faith in Bobby, in any way. She was certain, however, that financially his trip would be a losing one, and from the time he left she kept her mind almost constantly upon the thought of his future. She had become almost desperately anxious for him to fulfill the hopes of his father, and day by day she studied the commercial field as she had never thought it possible that she could do. There was no line of industry upon which she did not ponder, and there was scarcely any morning that she did not at the breakfast table ask Dan Elliston the ins and outs of some business. If he was not able to tell her all she wanted to know, she usually commissioned him to find out. He took these requests in good part, and if she accomplished nothing else by all her inquiries she acquired such a commercial education as falls to the lot of but few home-kept young women.

One morning her uncle came down a trifle late for breakfast and was in a hurry.

"The Elliston School of Commercial Instruction will have a recess for this session," he observed as he popped into his chair. "I have an important engagement at the factory this morning and have about seven minutes for breakfast. During that seven minutes I prefer to eat rather than to talk. However, I do not object to listening. This being my last word except to request you to gather things closely about my plate, you may now start."

"Very well," said she, dimpling as she usually did at any evidence of briskness on the part of her Uncle Dan, for from long experience she knew the harmlessness of his bark. "Nick Allstyne happened to remark to me last night that the _Bulletin_ is for sale. What do you think of the newspaper business for Bobby?"

"The time necessary to answer that question takes my orange from me," objected Uncle Dan as he hastily sipped another bite of the fruit and pushed it away. "The newspaper business for Bobby!" He drew the muffins toward him and took one upon his plate, then he stopped and pondered a moment. "Do you know," said he, "that's about the best suggestion you've made. I believe he could make a hummer out of a newspaper. I've noticed this about the boy's failures; they have all of them been due to lack of experience; none of them has been due to any absence of backbone. Nobody has ever bluffed him."

Agnes softly clapped her hands.

"Exactly!" she cried. "Well, Uncle Dan, this is the last word _I'm_ going to say. For the balance of your seven minutes I'm going to help stuff you with enough food to keep you until luncheon time; but sometime to-day, if you find time, I want you to go over and see the proprietor of the _Bulletin_ and find out how much he wants for his property, and investigate it as a business proposition just the same as if you were going into it yourself."

Uncle Dan, dipping voraciously into his soft boiled eggs, grinned and said: "Huh!" Then he looked at his watch. When he came home to dinner, however, he hunted up Agnes at once.

"Your _Bulletin_ proposition looks pretty good," he told her. "I saw Greenleaf. He's a physical wreck and has been for two years. He has to get away or die. Moreover, his physical condition has reacted upon his paper. His circulation has run down, but he has a magnificent plant and a good office organization. He wants two hundred thousand dollars for his plant, good will and franchises. I'm going to investigate this a little further. Do you suppose Bobby will have two hundred thousand left when he gets through with grand opera?"

"I hope so," replied Agnes; "but if he hasn't I'll have him waste the balance of this two hundred and fifty thousand so that he can draw the next one."

Uncle Dan laughed in huge enjoyment of this solution.

"You surely were cut out for high finance," he told her.

She smiled, and was silent a while, hesitating.

"You seem to think pretty well of the business as a business proposition," she ventured anxiously, by and by; "but you haven't told me what you think of it as applicable to Bobby."

"If he'll take you in the office with him, he'll do all right," he answered her banteringly; but when he went up-stairs and found his wife he said: "Constance, if that girl don't pull Bobby Burnit through his puppyhood in good shape there is something wrong with the scheme of creation. There is something about you women of the Elliston family that every once in a while makes me pause and reverence the Almighty," whereupon Aunt Constance flushed prettily, as became her.

With the same earnestness of purpose Agnes handled the question of Bobby's breach-of-promise suit in so far as it affected his social reception. The Ellistons went to the theater and sat in a box to exhibit him on the second night after his return, and Agnes took careful count of all the people she knew who attended the theater that night. The next day she went to see all of them, among others Mrs. Horace Wickersham, whose social word was social law.

"My dear," said the redoubtable Mrs. Wickersham, "it does Bobby Burnit great credit that he did not marry the creature. Of course I shall invite him to our affair next Friday night."

After that there could be no further question of Bobby's standing, though without the firm support of Agnes he might possibly have been ostracised, for a time at least.

It was with much less certainty that she spread before Bobby the facts and figures which Uncle Dan had secured about the condition and prospects of the _Bulletin_. She did not urge the project upon him. Instead, though in considerable anxiety, she left the proposition open to his own judgment. He pondered the question more soberly and seriously than he had yet considered anything. There were but two chances left to redeem himself now, and he felt much like a gambler who has been reduced to his last desperate stake. He grew almost haggard over the proposition, and he spent two solid weeks in investigation. He went to Washington to see Jack Starlett, who knew three or four newspaper proprietors in Philadelphia and elsewhere. He obtained introductions to these people and consulted with them, inspected their plants and listened to all they would say; as they liked him, they said much. Ripened considerably by what he had found out he came back home and bought the _Bulletin_. Moreover, he had very definitely made up his mind precisely what to do with it.

On the first morning that he walked into the office of that paper as its sole owner and proprietor, he called the managing editor to him and asked:

"What, heretofore, has been the politics of this paper?"

"Pale yellow jelly," snapped Ben Jolter wrathfully.

"Supposed to be anti-Stone, hasn't it been?" Bobby smilingly inquired.

"But always perfectly ladylike in what it said about him."

"And what are the politics of the employees?"

At this Mr. Jolter snorted.

"They are good newspaper men, Mr. Burnit," he stated in quick defense; "and a good newspaper man has no politics."

Bobby eyed Mr. Jolter with contemplative favor. He was a stout, stockily-built man, with a square head and sparse gray hair that would persist in tangling and curling at the ends; and he perpetually kept his sleeves rolled up over his big arms.

"I don't know anything about this business," confessed Bobby, "but I hope to. First of all, I'd like to find out why the _Bulletin_ has no circulation."

"The lack of a spinal column," asserted Jolter. "It has had no policy, stood pat on no proposition, and made no aggressive fight on anything."

"If I understand what you mean by the word," said Bobby slowly, "the _Bulletin_ is going to have a policy."

It was now Mr. Jolter's turn to gaze contemplatively at Bobby.

"If you were ten years older I would feel more hopeful about it," he decided bluntly.

The young man flushed uncomfortably. He was keenly aware that he had made an ass of himself in business four successive times, and that Jolter knew it. By way of facing the music, however, he showed to his managing editor a letter, left behind with old Johnson for Bobby by the late John Burnit:

The mere fact that a man has been foolish four times is no absolute proof that he is a fool; but it's a mighty significant hint. However, Bobby, I'm still betting on you, for by this time you ought to have your fighting blood at the right temperature; and I've seen you play great polo in spite of a cracked rib.

"P. S. If any one else intimates that you are a fool, trounce him one for me."

"If there's anything in heredity you're a lucky young man," said Jolter seriously, as he handed back the letter.

"I think the governor was worried about it himself," admitted Bobby with a smile; "and if he was doubtful I can't blame you for being so. Nevertheless, Mr. Jolter, I must insist that we are going to have a policy," and he quietly outlined it.

Mr. Jolter had been so long a directing voice in the newspaper business that he could not be startled by anything short of a presidential assassination, and that at press time. Nevertheless, at Bobby's announcement he immediately sought for his pipe and was compelled to go into his own office after it. He came back lighting it and felt better.

"It's suicide!" he declared.

"Then we'll commit suicide," said Bobby pleasantly.

Mr. Jolter, after long, grinning thought, solemnly shook hands with him.

"I'm for it," said he. "Here's hoping that we survive long enough to write our own obituary!"

Mr. Jolter, to whom fighting was as the breath of new-mown hay, and who had long been curbed in that delightful occupation, went back into his own office with a more cheerful air than he had worn for many a day, and issued a few forceful orders, winding up with a direction to the press foreman to prepare for ten thousand extra copies that evening.

When the three o'clock edition of the _Bulletin_ came on the street, the entire first page was taken up by a life-size half-tone portrait of Sam Stone, and underneath it was the simple legend:

THIS MAN MUST LEAVE TOWN

The first citizens to awake to the fact that the _Bulletin_ was born anew were the newsboys. Those live and enterprising merchants, with a very keen judgment of comparative values, had long since ceased to call the _Bulletin_ at all; half of them had even ceased to carry it. Within two minutes after this edition was out they were clamoring for additional copies, and for the first time in years the alley door of the _Bulletin_ was besieged by a seething mob of ragged, diminutive, howling masculinity. Out on the street, however, they were not even now calling the name of the paper. They were holding forth that black first page and screaming just the name of Sam Stone.

Sam Stone! It was a magic name, for Stone had been the boss of the town since years without number; a man who had never held office, but who dictated the filling of all offices; a man who was not ostensibly in any business, but who swayed the fortune of every public enterprise; a self-confessed grafter whom crusade after crusade had failed to dislodge from absolute power. The crowds upon the street snapped eagerly at that huge portrait and searched as eagerly through the paper for more about the Boss. They did not find it, except upon the editorial page, where, in the space usually devoted to drivel about "How Kind We Should Be to Dumb Animals," and "Why Fathers Should Confide More in Their Sons," appeared in black type a paraphrase of the legend on the outside: "_Sam Stone Must Leave Town._" Beneath was the additional information: "Further issues of the _Bulletin_ will tell why." Above and below this was nothing but startlingly white blank paper, two solid columns of it up and down the page.

Down in the deep basement of the _Bulletin_, the big three-deck presses, two of which had been standing idle since the last presidential election, were pounding out copies by the thousand, while grimy pressmen, blackened with ink, perspired most happily.

By five o'clock, men and even girls, pouring from their offices, and laborers coming from work, had all heard of it, and on the street the bold defiance created first a gasp and then a smile. Another attempt to dislodge Sam Stone was, in the light of previous efforts, a laughable thing to contemplate; and yet it was interesting.

In the office of the _Bulletin_ it was a gleeful occasion. Nonchalant reporters sat down with that amazing front page spread out before them, studied the brutal face of Stone and chuckled cynically. Lean Doc Miller, "assistant city editor," or rather head copy reader, lit one cigarette from the stub of another and observed, to nobody in particular but to everybody in general:

"I can see where we all contribute for a beautiful Gates Ajar floral piece for one Robert Burnit;" whereupon fat "Bugs" Roach, "handling copy" across the table from him, inquired:

"Do you suppose the new boss really has this much nerve, or is he just a damned fool?"

"Stone won't do a thing to _him_!" ingratiatingly observed a "cub" reporter, laying down twelve pages of "copy" about a man who had almost been burglarized.

"Look here, you Greenleaf Whittier Squiggs," said Doc Miller most savagely, not because he had any particular grudge against the unfortunately named G. W., but because of discipline and the custom with "cubs," "the next time you're sent out on a twenty-minute assignment like this, remember the number of the _Bulletin_, 427 Grand Street. The telephone is Central 2051, and don't forget to report the same day. Did you get the man's name? Uh-huh. His address? Uh-huh. Well, we don't want the item."

Slow and phlegmatic Jim Brown, who had been city editor on the _Bulletin_ almost since it was the _Bulletin_ under half a dozen changes of ownership and nearly a score of managing editors, sauntered over into Jolter's room with a copy of the paper in his hand, and a long black stogie held by some miracle in the corner of his mouth, where it would be quite out of the road of conversation.

"Pretty good stuff," he drawled, indicating the remarkable first page.

"The greatest circus act that was ever pulled off in the newspaper business," asserted Jolter. "It will quadruple the present circulation of the _Bulletin_ in a week."

"Make or break," assented the city editor, "with the odds in favor of the break."

A slenderly-built young man, whose red face needed a shave and whose clothes, though wrinkled and unbrushed, shrieked of quality, came stumbling up the stairs in such hot haste as was possible in his condition, and without ceremony or announcement burst into the room where Bobby Burnit, with that day's issue of the _Bulletin_ spread out before him, was trying earnestly to get a professional idea of the proper contents of a newspaper.

"Great goods, old man!" said the stranger. "I want to congratulate you on your lovely nerve," and seizing Bobby's hand he shook it violently.

"Thanks," said Bobby, not quite sure whether to be amused or resentful. "Who are you?"

"I'm Dillingham," announced the red-faced young man with a cheerful smile.

Bobby was about to insist upon further information, when Mr. Jolter came in to introduce Brown, who had not yet met Mr. Burnit.

"Dill," drawled Brown, with a twinkle in his eye, "how much money have you?"

"Money to burn; money in every pocket," asserted Mr. Dillingham; "money to last for ever," and he jammed both hands in his trousers' pockets.

It was an astonishing surprise to Mr. Dillingham, after groping in those pockets, to find that he brought up only a dollar bill in his left hand and forty-five cents in silver in his right. He was still contemplating in awed silence this perplexing fact when Brown handed him a five-dollar bill.

"Now, you run right out and get stewed to the eyebrows again," directed Brown. "Get properly pickled and have it over with, then show up here in the morning with a headache and get to work. We want you to take charge of the Sam Stone expose, and in to-morrow's _Bulletin_ we want the star introduction of your life."

"Do you mean to say you're going to trust the whole field conduct of this campaign to that chap?" asked Bobby, frowning, when Dillingham had gone.

"This is his third day, so Dill's safe for to-morrow morning," Brown hastened to assure him. "He'll be up here early, so penitent that he'll be incased in a blue fog--and he'll certainly deliver the goods."

Bobby sighed and gave it up. This was a new world.

Over in his dingy little office, up his dingy flight of stairs, Sam Stone sat at his bare and empty old desk, looking contemplatively out of the window, when Frank Sharpe--his luxuriant gray mustache in an extraordinary and most violent state of straggling curliness--came nervously bustling in with a copy of the _Bulletin_ in his hand.

"Have you seen this?" he shrilled.

"Heard about it," grunted Stone.

"But what do you think of it?" demanded Sharpe indignantly, and spread the paper out on the desk before the Boss, thumping it violently with his knuckles.

Stone studied it well, without the slightest change of expression upon his heavy features.

"It's a swell likeness," he quietly conceded, by and by.