Part 18

“If I told you the name of the newspaper that honors itself by playing fair with you, I suspect you would set in motion the machinery that you--er--men of large affairs use to suppress news. You couldn't reach my city editor, who is a poor man with a family of eight, or the reporter, who is penniless; but you could reach the owner, who is a millionaire. This is my first big story in New York and it will make me professionally. It means a lot to me!”

“About how much does it mean to you, young man?” asked E. H. Merriwether, with a particularly polite curiosity.

“Speaking in language that should be intelligible to you and using the terms by which you measure' all things down here--” He paused, and then said, bluntly, “You mean in cash, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I should say, Mr. Merriwether, that this story is worth to me--Let me see!” And he began to count on his fingers, like a woman. This habit inexpressibly angers men who find no trouble in remembering numbers of dollars. “I should say, Mr. Merriwether, that it is worth about three thousand two hundred and eighty-six--millions of dollars. If I am to stop being a decent newspaper man to become a blackmailer and general damned fool I'd want to make enough to endow all my pet charities and carry out a series of rather expensive experiments in philanthropy.”

“But--” began the magnate.

“No, sir,” interrupted the reporter, “no money, please. Just assume that I am a damned fool and, therefore, refuse to consider a bribe.”

“I have not bribed you,” suggested E. H. Merriwether, calmly. His eyes never left the reporter's face.

“Then I misjudged you, and I apologize abjectly; but permit me to continue to be an ass and blind to money. What about Thomas Thorne Merriwether, only son and heir of the railroad king of the Southwest?”

“Well, what about him?” The face of E. H. Merriwether showed only what you might call a perfunctory curiosity. The reporter looked at him admiringly. After a pause, he asked:

“Do you know her?”

“Do you?”

“Then you don't!” exclaimed the reporter, triumphantly. “This is better than I had hoped.”

“Better?”

“Certainly; it means a better introductory article. The first of the series will be: 'To whom is Tom Merriwether engaged?' Think of it, sir,” he said, with the enthusiasm of the true artist, “the heir of the Merriwether millions! By the way, could you tell offhand how many millions I might safely say?”

Whatever Mr. Merriwether may have thought, he merely said, with the cold finality that often imposes on young reporters:

“Young man, if you begin your career by being vulgar your ruin will be of your own doing.”

“My dear sir, vulgarity never ruined any career. All the great men of history were at the beginning accused of hopeless vulgarity--by those on whom they trod. I tell you it is not vulgarity that prompts me, but mastery of the technic of my trade. Do you care to have me tell you about my article?”

What Mr. E. H. Merriwether really wished to hear was that Tom was not in love--that he was not on the verge of brutally assassinating all the hopes and dreams of a fond father. What he said to the unspeakable reporter was:

“Yes.”

“Well, I start with this basis--my knowledge of your son's engagement.”

“Where did you get that knowledge?”

“One of the few things a reporter is incapable of doing is betraying a confidence. To tell you the source of my information would be that. Starting with that one fact, my problem is to make that one fact so important as to enable me to write several thousand words. To justify this I must make your son very important. He is not really very important, but you are. I shall slightly over-accentuate here and there”--he waved his hand in the air, and repeated, dreamily--“here and there! You will be the Napoleon of railroads, the Von Moltke of the ticker, doer of deeds and upbuilder, indisputably the greatest captain of industry that America has yet produced!”

“Heavens!” burst from the lips of the imperturbable little magnate.

“You are a stunning study for a novelist. Yours is the great romance of the American business man! Having made you romantic, I wave my magician's wand and quadruple your millions. Yours, my dear sir--if you don't happen to know it--is one of the great fortunes of the world! You've got Croesus skinned to death and John D. whining over his lost pre-eminence!”

“Now look here--” interjected E. H. Merriwether, sternly; but the reporter retorted, earnestly:

“Hold your horses!” And the great millionaire did. The young man continued in his enthusiastic way: “It is much to have the hundreds of Merriwether millions, but it is infinitely more to have all the Merriwether millions and such a father and youth. I thus make Tom, who is really of no importance, of even greater importance than the great E. H. Merriwether. Do I know my business?” And he bowed in the general direction of the elder Merriwether.

“I begin to suspect,” replied the elder Merriwether, “that you do.”

He was watching the reporter closely. He always had found it profitable to let men talk on. A man who talks is apt to show you what he is; and that furnishes to you the best available weapon. You also may learn when it is better not to fight.

“When it comes to picturesque writing about people I do not know, I can assure you, Mr. Merriwether,” the young man said, modestly, “that I haven't an equal in the United States. In your case I shall not be handicapped by either facts or knowledge, which are always fatal to the creative faculty. I shall be free--absolutely free to write!”

Mr. Merriwether permitted himself a frown in order to conceal his uneasiness. This young man was talking like a humorist. The eyes were intelligent and fearless. The combination was formidable.

“Your theory has doubtless many supporters among your colleagues.”

“There are,” admitted the reporter, cheerfully, “other bright young creative artists on our staff. Well, I proceed to make your son a paragon--a clean-minded, decent, manly young millionaire.”

“Which he is!” interjected Mr. Merriwether, sternly.

“Of course! I know it. Have no fear on that score. I'd make him all that even if he wasn't. I proceed to draw attention--with a cleverness I'd call devilish if it wasn't my own--to the strange and, on the whole, agreeable vein of romanticism in the Merriwether nature. There you are, a hard-headed man of affairs, whose name the world associates with great engineering deeds and great high-finance misdeeds! You are--do you know what?--a poet!--a wonderful poet whose lines are of steel, whose numbers are of tonnage, whose song is chanted by the ten thousand purring wheels of your tireless cars.”

“My car-wheels are lubricated. They don't purr,” mildly objected the railroad poet.

“They do in my story,” said the reporter, firmly. “And to prove it I'll quote some striking lines from one of those unknown books we great writers always have on tap. Your romantic nature expresses itself in the creation of an empire in the alkali desert. You have written an epic on the map of America--in green!”

“That sounds good to me,” said Mr. E. H. Merriwether, with the detached air of a critic of literature.

He did not know just how to win this young man's silence--perhaps by letting him talk himself out of creative literature; perhaps by the inauguration of a molasses diet at once!

“Thank you! Your son Tom's romance is in his unusual love-affair! This young man, the most eligible bachelor in the world--handsome, rich, a fastidious artist in feminine beauty, with a heart that has kept itself inviolate--pretty swell word that?--in-vi-o-late--all these years, opens at her sweet voice. We alone are able to announce the engagement. High society is more than interested--more than startled. As thinks society, so thinks the shop-girl; and there are fifty million of her. What society is incinerating itself with desire to find out is: To whom is Tom Merriwether engaged? Will our fair readers devour the article? I leave it to you, Mr. Merriwether!” The young man looked inquiringly at Mr. Merriwether.

“I'd read it myself,” said Mr. Merriwether, very impressively. “I couldn't help it!” You could see that literature had triumphed over the stock-ticker. A great diplomatist was lost in a great money-maker.

“Thank you! And what do you find at the end of the article? What? Why, a nice psychological little paragraph to the effect that we propose to print the name of the one woman who, of all the tens of thousands who have tried, has won the heart of Thomas Thome Merriwether, whose father you have the honor to be. We refrain, in order to have the parents of the young people formally announce the engagement. By doing this we get the full value of the to-be-continued-in-our-next suspense, for the first time utilized in a news story; and we also increase our reputation for gentlemanly conservatism, which prevents the refined reporter of the--of my paper from intruding into a family affair.”

“Will your paper be damned fool enough to--” began E. H. Merriwether, intentionally skeptical.

“It is not damned folly to extract all the juice contained in the scoop of the century--it is technical skill of a very high order. Now what happens? My esteemed contemporaries, morning and evening, chuck a fit and bounce their society editors. They then rush for the telephone and despatch their strongest photographers, sharpest sleuths, and entire dictagraph corps to the scene. They can't find Tom--because, as you know, he is in--he is out of town. And they can't find her--because I haven't said who she is. There remains you!”

“That won't do them any good,” said Mr. E. H. Merriwether, decisively; but he shuddered.

“Precisely! I banked on that. But, even if you did see them, what could you tell them? Deny what is bound to be confirmed in the next issue of my paper? You know better than to acquire a reputation for lying in the newspapers. No, siree! Your game is to deny yourself to all inquirers and say nothing. My esteemed contemporaries have now but one desire--to wit: to print the name and publish the portrait of your son's fiancée. Of course you see what happens then, don't you?”

The reporter looked at the iron-hearted E. H. Merriwether, with such pity in his eyes that the great little czar of the Southwestern Railroad for the first time in his life realized he was merely a man--a human being; an ordinary, every-day father; one drop in the vast ocean; one of the crowd temporarily aboveground and therefore exposed to the same sorrows and troubles and sore vexations as all mankind. His millions, his position in the world, his great work, his undoubted genius--could not avail even to rid him of annoyance. Can you imagine John D. Rockefeller living on Staten Island in June and unable to buy mosquito-netting--price, five cents a yard?

“What will happen?” asked the great millionaire, who was also a father.

“My intelligent colleagues, of course, will look for the lady. Where there is a strong demand the supply automatically offers itself for consumption. And what will the seven hundred and fifty alert young men, with great capacities for fictional art, who are temporarily assisting actress-ladies and self-paying authoresses and unprinted poetesses and fertilizer-manufacturers unmarried daughters, do? What will those estimable young artists, miscalled press agents, do when they encounter the demand for Tom's fiancée's photograph? What except 'Here she is!'--six thousand words, thirty-two poses, and a facsimile of a love-letter or two, to prove it! And then--chorus-ladies, poetesses, fair divorcées about to honor the vaudeville--” The reporter stopped--he had seen the look on E. H. Merri-wether's face. He felt sorry. “But it is true,” he said, defensively.

“Yes!” Tom's poor rich father felt cold all over.

The reporter pursued, more quietly: “You know the ingenuity of my colleagues, the great American respect for a millionaire's privacy, and the national sense of humor. Will your son's love-affair be discussed? Will it be discussed with the gentlemanly reticence and innate delicacy of feeling of _my_ story?”

Mr. E. H. Merriwether never before realized that the law against homicide was even more absurd than an Interstate Commerce Commission order; but he had to bow to the inevitable. He was beginning to understand how Napoleon felt on the deck of the _Bellerophon_ when on the way to St. Helena., Do you remember the picture? He nodded--not dejectedly, but also not far from it.

“Well, in a day or two or three, according to conditions; we come out with it. We print the lady's name and her portrait--possibly not the best of all her photographs, but the only one I could--”

“Who is she?” burst from the lips of the reporter's victim.

Instantly the reporter's face became very serious. “I feared so, Mr. Merriwether,” he said, very quietly.

“Look here, my boy!” interrupted Mr. Merriwether, with an earnestness that had in it a threat. “I don't know what your game is and I don't care. I'll admit right now that you are a very clever young man and probably not a crook; but I tell you calmly, quietly, without any threats, that you are not going to publish any damned-fool article about my family in any paper in New York.”

The reporter rose and looked straight into the unblinking eyes of the great financier. Then he said, slowly, and, the old fellow admitted, distinctly impressively:

“And I tell you, twice as quietly and ten times as calmly, without any fool threats, that all the daily newspapers in New York and Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and ten thousand other towns in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Canal Zone, and countries in the Postal Union, are going to publish articles about your son Tom's engagement, and later on about his marriage. Understand once for all, that there are some things all your millions and all your will-power cannot do. This is one of them. It is the penalty of being a public character--or, if you prefer, of being an exceptionally great man. Do I understand that you have nothing to say about your son's coming marriage?”

E. H. Merriwether in less than five seconds thought of more than five thousand possibilities, all in connection with his son's marriage. Then he said, very slowly, fighting for time and a chance to escape:

“My son will marry whenever he and the young lady chiefly interested judge fit to do so. He and I are in perfect accord, as always.” Mr. Merriwether was looking into the too-fearless and too-intelligent gray-blue eyes of the reporter. Then he did what he did not often do in his Wall Street affrays--he capitulated. “Will you give me your word that you will not use for publication what I am about to tell you?”

“No, sir, I won't!” emphatically replied the reporter. “You might tell me something I already know and then you'd always think I had broken my word. I will not pledge myself not to print the name of your daughter-in-law-to-be; but anything that concerns you personally or your attitude toward your son's finacée, or hints of a family quarrel--or those things that offend a sensitive man--I promise not to print. You have some rights; but I also owe certain things to myself and my paper. I've been frank with you. You can be frank with me if you wish. I put it up to you.”

Mr. Merriwether, after a thoughtful pause, said: “Look here! I don't know anything about my son's engagement. I cannot swear he is not engaged, but I don't know that he is. It follows that I do not know the young lady. You don't have to print that, do you?”

The reporter gazed on the financier meditatively. Presently, instead of answering the question, he asked:

“Have you had no suspicion of any romance?”

“Well”--and it was plain that E. H. Merriwether was telling the truth, having made up his mind to that policy as being the wisest--“well, I have of late suspected that such a thing might be possible. It is, I will confess to you, a terrible predicament, because a man naturally cherishes certain hopes for his only son.” On Mr. Merriwether's face there was a quite human look of suffering.

“Of course,” said the reporter, apologetically, as though offering an excuse for a friend's misdeed--“of course a man in love is not always wise.”

“No. And though I have no intention or desire to bribe you, and though I would not presume to interfere with you in your professional activities or influence you by pecuniary considerations, you will pardon me for suggesting--”

The reporter did not let him go on. He rose and said, with real dignity:

“Mr. Merriwether, suppose we drop the matter right here?”

“You mean?”

“I will not print any story yet--on one condition.”

“Name it. I think likely I can meet it.”

“Give me your promise that you will give me an interview the next time I come to see you. It may be in a day or two or a week. I don't promise not to print the story, you understand, but it will give you time to--well, to see your son.”

E. H. Merriwether held out his hand and said: “I will see you any time you come. But let me say, as an older man, that if you should suffer any loss by not printing--”

“Oh no--I shall not suffer. I propose to print my story. I am simply deferring publication; but I thank you for the offer you were going to make. It shows more consideration and, therefore, far greater common sense than most men in your position habitually display before a reporter. I'll do even more--I'll give you a friendly tip.” He stopped talking and looked doubtfully at E. H. Merriwether.

“Thank you,” said Mr. Merriwether, with a remarkable mixture of gratitude, dignity, and anxiety. “I am listening.”

“Find out why he goes to 777 Fifth Avenue. There are some things a really intelligent father, poor or rich, should--” He caught himself.

“Please finish, my boy!” cried the great little man, almost entreatingly.

“There are just a few things”--the reporter was speaking very slowly and his voice was lowered--“which an intelligent father does not trust to others--not even to the most loyal confidential men--things that should be done by the father himself. The number is 777 Fifth Avenue!”

“I thank you, Mr.--”

“William Tully,” said the reporter.

“Mr. Tully, I thank you. I think you are throwing away time and brains in your present position, and if you should ever--”

“Thank you, sir. Don't be afraid. I shall not bother you by--”

“But I mean it,” said E. H. Merriwether.

The reporter smiled and said, “If you knew how often my fortune has been made by men whose story I have not printed you'd be deaf, too.”

“Young man, I sometimes forget favors, but not the possession of brains. I need them in my business.”

“Well, then, suppose you show your appreciation by telling the red-headed person in the outer office that he is to take in my card to you when I call again?”

“Certainly!” And the czar of the great Pacific & Southwestern system nearly slew Doyle by accompanying the reporter to the outer door and saying:

“Doyle, any time Mr. Tully comes to see me let me know instantly, no matter what I may be doing or who is with me. Understand?”

“Yes, sir!” gasped Doyle, looking terrifiedly at the sorcerer.

Tully! Irish! That was the reason, of course; but he was a wonder, all the same.

“Good day, Mr. Tully. I thank you. And don't forget my offer.”

Mr. Merriwether bowed as the door closed on Mr. William Tully and then, walking like a man in a trance, returned to his private office. He rang the push-button marked No. 1, and when McWayne appeared turned a haggard face to his private secretary.

“McWayne, that reporter has a story of Tom's engagement, but he wouldn't tell me who the girl is.”

“I don't believe it!” cried McWayne, with a not very intelligent intention of comforting his chief. At times the male Irish mind works femininely.

“Neither do I--and yet I do. It confirms Dr. Frauenthal's diagnosis. I guess he knows his business, after all. Well, the story will not be published yet. He acted pretty decently.”

McWayne wondered how much it had cost the old man, but he said, “Didn't he intimate--”

“That reporter knows his business,” cut in E. H. Merriwether. “He ought to be a dramatist. Have you heard from your men?”

“Yes, sir. Tom has gone to Boston. Two of them are with him. He suspects nothing.”

“What else?”

“They will let me know by long distance if anything happens.”

“If anything! Great Scott! isn't it enough that--Let me hear what they report--on the instant!”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, McWayne--” He hesitated.

McWayne, his face full of sincere solicitude, prompted, gently:

“Yes, chief?”

It was the first time he had ever used that word. It made his speech so friendly, so affectionately personal, that E. H. Merriwether said:

“Thank you, McWayne. I wish you would find out for me at once who lives in 777 Fifth Avenue.”

“Yes, sir,” said McWayne. “That's where--” He caught himself. .

“I am afraid so!” acquiesced the railroad czar, listlessly.

VIII

Within an hour McWayne walked into the private office. His chief closed his jaws--a weaker man would have clenched his fists--in anticipation.

“Breese & Silliman, the real-estate men, say they rented 777 Fifth Avenue, furnished, to a Madam Calderon--an American woman, widow of a Peruvian nitrate king. She came up here and asked Breese about a suitable location. She has a daughter she wishes to marry in America. She talked quite freely about her affairs. The house was for sale, but she leased if, furnished, with privilege of purchase. Belongs to the Martin-Schwenk Construction Company. The daughter is about thirty, dark, Spanish-looking, and fleshy; rather--er--inclined to make googoo eyes, as Breese says, in a kind of foreign way.”

“Go on,” commanded E. H. Merriwether.

“Mrs. Calderon said point-blank that she wished her daughter to marry a nice young man of wealth and position, preferably a blond. I gather that the agents were rather anxious to let the house and probably encouraged her. She has paid quarterly in advance, and her banking references are O. K.; but nothing about her personally is known to any one. That's all I could get.”

“Very well. Thank you, McWayne.”

The private secretary stood beside the desk, hesitated, and presently walked out. Shortly afterward, the great and ruthless E. H. Merriwether, full of perplexity and regret--and some remorse over his neglect of his only son for so many years--went uptown. He desired to know what to expect, in order to be able to think intelligently, and, therefore, to fight efficiently. How could he fight--not knowing what or whom to fight?

He told the chauffeur to wait, and then rang the bell of 777.

One of the four footmen whose faces had impressed Tom as being distinctly too intelligent for menials, opened the door.

“I wish to see Madam Calderon.”

“I beg pardon, sir. Have you an appointment?”

“No. Say it is Mr. Merriwether.”

“Mr. who, sir?”

Mr. Merriwether took out a card. The footman received it on a very elaborate silver-gilt card-tray and, pointing to a particularly uncomfortable, high-backed Circassian-walnut chair in the foyer, left the great little multimillionaire under the watchful eye of footman Number Two. This annoyed Mr. Merriwether. Nobody is altogether invulnerable.

The footman returned, with the card and the tray.

“Madam is not at home, sir; but her brother would be glad to see you, if you wish, sir. He is madam's man of affairs.”

“Very well.”

“If you please, sir, this way.” And the footman led the way to the door of the library, where Tom had been received so often.

“Mr. Edward H. Merriwether!” The emphasis on the first name made the little czar of the Southwestern roads think it was done in order to differentiate him from Mr. Thomas Merriwether. Even great men are not above thinking themselves clever.