The Clarion

CHAPTER XXII

PA­TRI­OTS

Wor­thing­ton's Old Home Week is a gay, gaudy, and prof­itable in­sti­tu­tion. Dur­ing the six days of its course the city ha­bit­ual­ly main­tains the at­mo­sphere of a three-​ringed cir­cus, the bus­tle of a coun­ty fair, and the busi­ness ethics of the Bow­ery. Al­lured by widespread ad­ver­tis­ing and en­cour­aged by spe­cial rates on the rail­roads, the coun­try­side for a ra­dius of one hun­dred miles pours its in­hab­itants in­to the lo­cal metropo­lis, their pock­ets filled with greased dol­lars. Up­on them Wor­thing­ton lav­ish­es its left-​over and shelf-​clut­ter­ing mer­chan­dise, at fifty per cent more than its val­ue, amidst gen­er­al re­joic­ings. As Fes­tus Willard once put it, “There is a sound of rev­el­ry by night and larce­ny by day.” But then Mr. Willard, be­ing a man­ufac­tur­er and not a re­tail­er, lacks the sub­tler sym­pa­thy which makes love­ly the spir­it of Old Home hos­pi­tal­ity.

This year the cel­ebra­tion was to out­do it­self. Be­cause of the cen­ten­ni­al fea­ture, no less a per­son than the Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States, who had spent a year of his boy­hood at a lo­cal school, was pledged to at­tend. In it­self this meant a record crowd. Crops had been good lo­cal­ly and the toil-​worn agri­cul­tur­ist had sur­plus mon­ey where­with to pur­chase phono­graphs, gold teeth, cray­on en­large­ments of self and fam­ily, home in­struc­tion out­fits for hand-​paint­ing so­fa cush­ions, and sim­ilar prime ne­ces­si­ties of farm life. To trans­form his stat­ic sav­ings in­to dy­nam­ic as­sets for it­self was Wor­thing­ton's ba­sic pur­pose in hold­ing its gala week. And now this benef­icent plan was threat­ened by one in­di­vid­ual, and he young, in­ex­pe­ri­enced, and a new Wor­thing­to­ni­an, Mr. Har­ring­ton Sur­taine. This un­fore­seen cloud up­on the hori­zon of peace, pros­per­ity, and hap­pi­ness rose in­to the ken of Dr. Sur­taine the day af­ter the ap­pear­ance of the sewing-​girl ed­ito­ri­al.

Dr. Sur­taine hadn't liked that ed­ito­ri­al. With his cus­tom­ary air of long-​suf­fer­ing good na­ture he had told Hal so over his home-​made ap­ple pie and rich milk, at the cheap and clean lit­tle lun­cheon place which he pa­tron­ized. Hal had no de­fense or ex­cuse to of­fer. In­deed, his ref­er­ence to the top­ic was of the most ca­su­al or­der and was im­me­di­ate­ly fol­lowed by this dis­con­cert­ing ques­tion:

“What about the Rook­eries epi­dem­ic, Dad?”

“Epi­dem­ic? There's no epi­dem­ic, Boy­ee.”

“Well, there's some­thing. Peo­ple are dy­ing down there faster than they ought to. It's spread be­yond the Rook­eries now.”

This was no news to the big doc­tor. But it was news to him that Hal knew it.

“How do you know?” he asked.

“I've been down there and ran right up­on it.”

The fa­ther's af­fec­tion and alarm out­leapt his cau­tion at this. “You bet­ter keep away from there, Boy­ee,” he warned anx­ious­ly.

“If there's no epi­dem­ic, why should I keep away?”

“There's al­ways a lot of in­fec­tion down in those ten­ements,” said Dr. Sur­taine lame­ly.

“Dad, when you made your re­port for the 'Clar­ion' did you tell us all you knew?”

“All ex­cept some med­ical tech­ni­cal­ities,” said the Doc­tor, who nev­er told a lie when a half-​lie would serve.

“I've just had a talk with the health of­fi­cer, Dr. Mer­ritt.”

“Mer­ritt's an alarmist.”

“He's alarmed this time, cer­tain­ly.”

“What does he think it is?”

“It?” said Hal, a tri­fle ma­li­cious­ly. “The epi­dem­ic?”

“Epi­dem­ic's a big word. The sick­ness.”

“How can he tell? He's had no chance to see the cas­es. They still mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­pear be­fore he can get to them. By the way, your Dr. De Vi­to seems to have a hand in that.”

“Hal, I wish you'd get over your trick of see­ing a mys­tery in ev­ery­thing,” said his fa­ther with a mild and tem­pered melan­choly. “It's a queer slant to your brain.”

“There's a queer slant to this busi­ness of the Rook­eries some­where, but I don't think it's in my brain. Mer­ritt says the May­or is hold­ing him off, and he be­lieves that Tip O'Far­rell, agent for the Rook­eries, has got the May­or's ear. He wants to force the is­sue by quar­an­tin­ing the whole lo­cal­ity.”

“And ad­ver­tise to the world that there's some sort of con­ta­gion there!” cried Dr. Sur­taine in dis­may.

“Well, if there is--”

“Think of Old Home Week,” ad­jured his fa­ther.

“The whole thing would be stamped out long be­fore then.”

“But not the pan­ic and the fear of it. Hal, I do hope you aren't go­ing to take this up in the 'Clar­ion.'”

“Not at present. There isn't enough to go on. But we're go­ing to watch, and if things get any worse I in­tend to do some­thing. So much I've promised Mer­ritt.”

The re­sult of this con­ver­sa­tion was that Dr. Sur­taine called a spe­cial meet­ing of the Com­mit­tee on Ar­range­ments for Old Home Week. In con­for­mi­ty with the laws of its genus, the com­mit­tee was made up of the rep­re­sen­ta­tive busi­ness men of the city, with a cler­gy­man or two for com­pli­ment to the Church, and most of the news­pa­per own­ers or ed­itors, to en­list the “ser­vices of the press.”

Its chair­man was thor­ough­ly typ­ical of the men­tal and eth­ical at­ti­tude of the com­mit­tee. He felt com­fort­ably as­sured that as he thought up­on any ques­tion of lo­cal pub­lic im­port, so would they think. Nev­er­the­less, he didn't in­tend to tell them all he knew. Such was not the pur­pose of the meet­ing. Its re­al pur­pose, not to put too fine a point on it, was to in­tim­idate the news­pa­pers, lest, if the “Clar­ion” broke the politic si­lence, oth­ers might fol­low; and, as a sec­ondary step, to fur­nish funds for the han­dling of the Rook­eries sit­ua­tion. Since Dr. Sur­taine de­signed to re­veal as lit­tle as pos­si­ble to his col­leagues, he nat­ural­ly be­gan his speech with the state­ment that he would be per­fect­ly frank with them.

“There's more sick­ness than there ought to be in the Rook­eries dis­trict,” he pro­ceed­ed. “It isn't dan­ger­ous, but it may prove ob­sti­nate. Some sort of malar­ious af­fec­tion, ap­par­ent­ly. Per­haps it may be nec­es­sary to do some clean­ing up down there. In that case, mon­ey may be need­ed.”

“How much?” some­body asked.

“Five thou­sand dol­lars ought to do it.”

“That's a con­sid­er­able sum,” an­oth­er point­ed out.

“And this is a se­ri­ous mat­ter,” re­tort­ed the chair­man. “Many of us re­mem­ber the dis­as­trous ef­fect that ru­mors of small­pox had on Old Home Week, some years back. We can't af­ford to have any­thing of that sort this time. An epi­dem­ic scare might ru­in the whole show.”

Now, an epi­dem­ic to these hard-​head­ed busi­ness men was some­thing that kept peo­ple away from their stores. And the ru­mor of an epi­dem­ic might ac­com­plish that as thor­ough­ly as the epi­dem­ic it­self. There­fore, with­out ques­tion­ing too far, they were quite will­ing to spend mon­ey to avert such dis­as­ter. The sum sug­gest­ed was vot­ed in­to the hands of a com­mit­tee of three to be ap­point­ed by the chair.

“In the mean time,” con­tin­ued Dr. Sur­taine, “I think we should go on record to the ef­fect that any news­pa­per which shall pub­lish or any in­di­vid­ual who shall cir­cu­late any re­port cal­cu­lat­ed to in­spire dis­trust or alarm is hos­tile to the best in­ter­ests of the city.”

“Well, what news­pa­per is like­ly to do that?” de­mand­ed Leroy Vane, of the “Ban­ner.”

“If it's any it'll be the 'Clar­ion,'” growled Colonel Park­er, ed­itor of the “Tele­gram.”

“The news­pa­per busi­ness in this town is go­ing to the dogs since the 'Clar­ion' changed hands,” said Car­ney Ford, of the “Press,” sav­age­ly. “No­body can tell what they're go­ing to do next over there. They're keep­ing the de­cent pa­pers on the jump all the time, with their yel­low­ness and scare­head muck­rak­ing.”

“A big sen­sa­tion­al sto­ry about an epi­dem­ic would be great meat for the 'Clar­ion,'” said Vane. “What does it care for the best in­ter­ests of the town?”

“As an ed­itor,” ob­served Dr. Sur­taine bland­ly, “my son don't ap­pear to be over-​pop­ular with his con­frères.”

“Why should he be?” cried Park­er. “He's for­ev­er pub­lish­ing stuff that we've al­ways let alone. Then the pub­lic wants to know why we don't get the news. Get it? Of course we get it. But we don't al­ways want to print it. There's such a thing as a gen­tle­man's un­der­stand­ing in the news­pa­per busi­ness.”

“So I've heard,” replied the chair­man. “Well, gen­tle­men, the boy's young. Give him time.”

“I'll give him six months, not longer, to go on the way he's been go­ing,” said John M. Gibbs, with a vi­cious snap of his teeth.

“Does the 'Clar­ion' re­al­ly in­tend to pub­lish any­thing about an epi­dem­ic?” asked Stick­ler, of the Ho­tel Stick­ler.

“Noth­ing is de­cid­ed yet, so far as I know. But I may safe­ly say that there's a prob­abil­ity of their get­ting up some kind of a sen­sa­tion­al sto­ry.”

“Can't you con­trol your own son?” asked some one blunt­ly.

“Un­der­stand this, if you please, gen­tle­men. Over the Wor­thing­ton 'Clar­ion' I have no con­trol what­so­ev­er.”

“Well, there's where the dan­ger lies,” said Vane. “If the 'Clar­ion' comes out with a big sto­ry, the rest of us have got to pub­lish some­thing to save our face.”

“What's to be done, then?” cried Stick­ler. “This means a big loss to the ho­tel busi­ness.”

“To all of us,” amend­ed the chair­man. “My sug­ges­tion is that our spe­cial com­mit­tee be em­pow­ered to wait up­on the ed­itor of the 'Clar­ion' and talk the mat­ter over with him.”

Em­bod­ied in the form of a mo­tion this was passed, and the chair ap­point­ed as that com­mit­tee three mer­chants, all of whom were mem­bers of the Pub­li­ca­tion Com­mit­tee of the Re­tail Union; and, as such, ex­er­cised the most pow­er­ful ad­ver­tis­ing con­trol in Wor­thing­ton. Dr. Sur­taine still pinned his hopes to the dol­lar and its ed­ito­ri­al po­ten­cy.

Un­of­fi­cial­ly and pri­vate­ly these men in­vit­ed to go with them to the “Clar­ion” of­fice Elias M. Pierce, who had not been at the meet­ing. At first he an­gri­ly re­fused. He wished to meet that young whelp Sur­taine nowhere but in a court of law, he an­nounced. But af­ter Bertram Hol­len­beck, of the Em­po­ri­um, the chair­man of the sub­com­mit­tee, had out­lined his plan, Pierce took a night to think it over, and in the morn­ing ac­cept­ed the in­vi­ta­tion with a grim smile.

Fore­warned by his fa­ther, who had begged that he con­sid­er care­ful­ly and with due re­gard to his own fu­ture the pro­pos­als to be set be­fore him, Hal was ready to re­ceive the dep­uta­tion in form. Pierce's pres­ence sur­prised him. He greet­ed all four men with equal­ly punc­til­ious po­lite­ness, how­ev­er, and gave cour­te­ous at­ten­tion while Hol­len­beck spoke for his col­leagues. The mer­chant ex­plained the pur­pose of the vis­it; set forth the im­por­tance to the city of the cen­ten­ni­al Old Home Week, and urged the in­ad­vis­abil­ity of any sen­sa­tion­al­ism which might alarm the pub­lic.

“We have suf­fi­cient as­sur­ance that there's noth­ing dan­ger­ous in the present sit­ua­tion,” he said.

“I haven't,” said Hal. “If I had, there would be noth­ing fur­ther to be said. The 'Clar­ion' is not seek­ing to man­ufac­ture a sen­sa­tion.”

“What is the 'Clar­ion' seek­ing to do?” asked Stens­land, an­oth­er of the com­mit­tee.

“Dis­cov­er and print the news.”

“Well, it isn't news un­til it's print­ed,” Hol­len­beck point­ed out com­fort­ably. “And what's the use of print­ing that sort of thing, any­way? It does a lot of peo­ple a lot of harm; but I don't see how it can pos­si­bly do any one any good.”

“Oh, put things straight,” said Stens­land. “Here, Mr. Ed­itor; you've stirred up a lot of trou­ble and lost a lot of ad­ver­tis­ing by it. Now, you start an epi­dem­ic scare and kill off the biggest re­tail busi­ness of the year, and you won't find an ad­ver­tis­er in town to stand by you. Is that plain?”

“Plain co­er­cion,” said Hal.

“Call it what you like,” be­gan the apos­tle of frank­ness, when Hol­len­beck cut in on him.

“No use get­ting ex­cit­ed,” he said. “Let's hear Mr. Sur­taine's views. What do you think ought to be done about the Rook­eries?”

In an­tic­ipa­tion of some such ques­tion Hal had been in con­sul­ta­tion with Dr. El­liot and the health of­fi­cer that morn­ing.

“Open up the Rook­eries to the health au­thor­ities and to pri­vate physi­cians oth­er than Dr. De Vi­to. Call Tip O'Far­rell's block­ade off. Clean out and dis­in­fect the ten­ements. If nec­es­sary, quar­an­tine ev­ery build­ing that's sus­pect­ed.”

“Why, what do you think the dis­ease is?” cried Hol­len­beck, tak­en aback by the pos­itive­ness of Hal's speech.

“Do _you_ tell _me_. You've come here to give di­rec­tions.”

“Some­thing in the na­ture of malar­ia,” said Hol­len­beck, re­cov­er­ing him­self. “So there's no call for ex­treme mea­sures. The Old Home Week Com­mit­tee will look af­ter the clean­ing-​up. As for quar­an­tine, that would be a con­fes­sion. And we want to do the thing as qui­et­ly as pos­si­ble.”

“You've come to the wrong shop to buy qui­et,” said Hal mild­ly.

“Now lis­ten to _me_.” Elias M. Pierce sat for­ward in his chair and fixed his stony gaze on Hal's face. “This is what you'll do with the 'Clar­ion.' You'll agree here and now to print noth­ing about this al­leged epi­dem­ic.”

Hal turned up­on him a silent but be­nign re­gard. The rec­ol­lec­tion of that con­tained smile lent an acid edge to the mag­nate's next speech.

“You will fur­ther promise,” con­tin­ued Pierce, “to quit all your muck­rak­ing of the busi­ness in­ter­ests and busi­ness men of this town.”

Still Hal smiled.

“And you will pub­lish to-​mor­row a full re­trac­tion of the ar­ti­cle about my daugh­ter and an am­ple apol­ogy for the at­tack up­on me.”

The ed­ito­ri­al ex­pres­sion did not change.

“On those con­di­tions,” Pierce con­clud­ed, “I will with­draw the crim­inal pro­ceed­ings against you, but not the civ­il suit. The in­dict­ment will be hand­ed down to-​mor­row.”

“I'm ready for it.”

“Are you ready for this? We have two un­bi­ased wit­ness­es--un­bi­ased, mind you--who will swear that the ac­ci­dent was Miss Cleary's own fault. And--” there was the hint of an evil smile on the thin lips, as they re­leased the fi­nal words very slow­ly--“and Miss Cleary's own af­fi­davit to that ef­fect.”

For the mo­ment the words seemed a jum­ble to Hal. Mean­ing, dire and dis­as­trous, in­formed them, as he re­peat­ed them to him­self. Prov­iden­tial­ly his tele­phone rang, giv­ing him an ex­cuse to go out. He hur­ried over to McGuire El­lis.

“I'm afraid it's right, Boss,” said the as­so­ciate ed­itor, af­ter hear­ing Hal's re­port.

“But how can it be? I saw the whole thing.”

“E.M. Pierce is rich. The nurse is poor. That is, she has been poor. Late­ly I've had a man keep­ing tabs on her. Since leav­ing the hos­pi­tal, she's moved in­to an ex­pen­sive flat, and has splurged out in­to good clothes. Whence the where­with­al?”

“Bribery!”

“With­out a doubt.”

“Then Pierce has got us.”

“It looks so,” ad­mit­ted El­lis sor­row­ful­ly.

“But we can't give in,” groaned Hal. “It means the end of the 'Clar­ion.' What is there to do?”

“Play for time,” ad­vised the oth­er. “Go back there with a stiff up­per lip and tell 'em you won't be bull­dozed or hur­ried. Then we'll have a coun­cil.”

“Sup­pose they de­mand an an­swer.”

“Refuse. See here, Hal. I know Pierce. He'd nev­er give up his re­venge, for any good he could do to the cause of the city by hold­ing off the 'Clar­ion' on this Old Home Week busi­ness if there weren't some­thing else. Pierce isn't built that way. That bar­gain of­fer is mighty sus­pi­cious. There's a weak spot in his case some­where. Hold him off, and we'll hunt for it.”

None could have guessed, from the young ed­itor's bear­ing, on his re­turn, that he knew him­self to be fac­ing a cru­cial sit­ua­tion. With the ut­most non­cha­lance he in­sist­ed that he must have time for con­sid­er­ation. In­flu­enced by Pierce, who was sure he had Hal beat­en, the com­mit­tee in­sist­ed on an im­me­di­ate re­ply to their ul­ti­ma­tum.

“You go up against this bunch,” ad­vised Stens­land, “and it's dol­lars to dough­nuts the re­ceiv­er'll have your 'Clar­ion' in­side of six months.”

Hal leaned in­do­lent­ly against the door. “Speak­ing of dol­lars and dough­nuts,” he said, "I'd like to tell you gen­tle­men a lit­tle sto­ry. You all know who Bab­son is, the biggest stock-​mar­ket ad­ver­tis­er in the coun­try. Well, Bab­son's van­ity is to be a great man out­side of his own line. He owns a big coun­try place down East, near the old town of Sin­gatuck; one of the old­est towns on the coast. Bab­son is as new as Sin­gatuck is old. The peo­ple didn't care much about his pa­tron­iz­ing ways. Nev­er­the­less, he kept do­ing things to 'brace the town up,' as he put it. The town need­ed it. It was about bankrupt. The fire de­part­ment was a joke, the wa­ter­works a farce, and the town hall a ru­in. Bab­son thought this gave him a chance to put his name on the map. So he said to his lo­cal fac­to­tum, 'You go down to the meet­ing of the se­lect­men next week, shake a bag­ful of dol­lars in front of those old dough­nuts, and make 'em this propo­si­tion: I'll give five thou­sand dol­lars to the fire de­part­ment, es­tab­lish a wa­ter sys­tem, re­build the town hall, pay off the town debt and put ten thou­sand dol­lars in­to the trea­sury if they'll change the name of the town from Sin­gatuck to Bab­son.'

"The fac­to­tum went to the meet­ing and pre­sent­ed the propo­si­tion. Now Sin­gatuck is proud of its age and char­ac­ter with a lo­cal pride that is quite be­yond the Bab­son dol­lars or the Bab­son type of imag­ina­tion. His propo­si­tion aroused no de­bate. There was a long si­lence. Then an old moss-​farmer who hadn't had mon­ey enough to buy him­self a new tooth for twen­ty years arose and said: 'I move you, Mis­ter Chair­man, that this body thank Mr. Bab­son kind­ly for his of­fer and tell him to go to hell.'

“The mo­tion was car­ried unan­imous­ly, and the meet­ing pro­ceed­ed to the con­sid­er­ation of oth­er busi­ness. I cite this, gen­tle­men, mere­ly as ev­idence that the dis­par­ity be­tween the dol­lar and the dough­nut isn't as great as some sup­pose.”

The third mem­ber of the com­mit­tee, who had thus far spo­ken no word, peered cu­ri­ous­ly at Hal from above a hooked nose. He was Mintz, of Shef­fler and Mintz.

“Do I get you righd?” he ob­served mild­ly; “you're telling us to go where the se­lect­men sent Mis­der Bab­son.”

“Plumb,” replied Hal, with his most ami­able ex­pres­sion. “So far as any im­me­di­ate de­ci­sion is con­cerned.”

“Less ged oud,” said Mr. Mintz to his col­leagues. They got out. Mintz was last to go. He came over to Hal.

“I lyg your sto­ry,” he said. “I lyg to see a feller stand up for his bizniz against the vorlt. I'm a Jew. I hope you lose--but--goot luck!”

He held out his hand. Hal took it. “Mr. Mintz, I'm glad to know you,” said he earnest­ly.

Noth­ing now re­mained for the com­mit­tee to do but to ex­pend their al­lot­ted fund to the best pur­pose. Their no­tion of the prop­er method was typ­ical­ly com­mer­cial. They thought to buy off an epi­dem­ic. Many times this has been tried. Nev­er yet has it suc­ceed­ed. It em­bod­ies one of the most dan­ger­ous of pop­ular hy­gien­ic fal­la­cies, that the dol­lar can over­take and swal­low the germ.