The Clarion

CHAPTER XXX

IL­LU­MI­NA­TION

Certi­na Charley, plus an in­de­ter­mi­nate quan­ti­ty of al­co­hol, had act­ed up­on Hal's mind as a chem­ical pre­cip­itant. All the young man's hith­er­to sup­pressed or un­ac­knowl­edged doubts of the Certi­na trade and its head were now vi­olent­ly crys­tal­lized. Hal hur­ried out of the ho­tel, the wrath in his heart for the de­cep­tion so long wrought up­on him chilled by a pro­founder feel­ing, a feel­ing of ir­repara­ble loss. He thought in that mo­ment that his love for his fa­ther was dead. It was not. It was on­ly his trust that was dy­ing, and dy­ing hard.

Since that day of his first vis­it to the Certi­na fac­to­ry, Hal's stan­dards had un­der­gone an in­trin­sic but un­con­scious al­ter­ation. Brought up to the patent medicine trade, though at a dis­tance, he thought of it, by habit, as on a par with oth­er big busi­ness­es. One whose child­hood is spent in a glue fac­to­ry is not prone to be su­per­sen­si­tive to odors. So, to Har­ring­ton Sur­taine, those eth­ical and moral dif­fi­cul­ties which would have bulked huge to one of a dif­fer­ent train­ing, were mere­ly in­her­ent phas­es of a prof­itable busi­ness. Mis­giv­ings had in­deed stirred, at first. For these he had chid­ed him­self, as for an over-​po­lite re­vul­sion from the nec­es­sary bla­tan­cy of a broad­ly ad­ver­tised en­ter­prise. More search­ing ques­tions, as they arose with­in him, he had met with the counter-​ev­idence of the in­ter­nal hu­man­ism and fair-​deal­ing of the Certi­na shop, and of the po­si­tion of its beloved chief in the com­mer­cial world.

In the face of the Re­lief Pills ex­po­sure, Hal could no longer ex­cuse his fa­ther on the ground that Dr. Sur­taine hon­est­ly cred­it­ed his medicines with im­pos­si­ble ef­fi­ca­cies. Still, he had rea­soned, the Doc­tor had been will­ing in­stant­ly to aban­don this nos­trum when the harm done by it was con­crete­ly brought home to him. Though this ar­gu­ment had fall­en far short of rec­on­cil­ing Hal to the Sur­taine stan­dards, nev­er­the­less it had served as a makeshift to jus­ti­fy in part his aban­don­ment of the hard-​won prin­ci­ples of the “Clar­ion,” a sur­ren­der nec­es­sary for the sav­ing of a loved and hon­ored fa­ther in whose es­sen­tial good­ness he had still be­lieved.

Now the ed­ifice of his faith was in ru­ins. If Certi­na it­self, if the tute­lary ge­nius of the House of Sur­taine, were in­deed but a mon­strous quack­ery cyn­ical­ly ac­cept­ed as such by those in the se­cret, what shred of de­fense re­mained to him who had so pros­pered by it? Through the wreck­age of his pride, his loy­al­ty, his af­fec­tion, Hal saw, in place of the glow­ing and be­nign face of Dr. Sur­taine, the sim­ulacrum of Fraud, sleek and crafty, bloat­ed fat with the blood of trag­ical­ly hope­ful dupes.

One great les­son of la­bor Hal had al­ready learned, that work is an an­odyne. From his in­ter­view with Certi­na Charley he made straight for the “Clar­ion” of­fice. As he hur­ried up the stairs, the door of Shear­son's room opened up­on him, and there emerged there­from a brick-​red, ag­ile man who greet­ed him with a hard cor­dial­ity.

“Your pa­per cer­tain­ly turned the trick. I got­ta hand it to you!”

“What trick?” asked Hal, not rec­og­niz­ing the stranger.

“Sell­ing my stock. Streaky Moun­tain Cop­per Com­pa­ny. Don't you re­mem­ber?”

Hal did re­mem­ber now. It was L.P. Mc­Quig­gan.

“More of the same for me, _if_ you please,” con­tin­ued the vis­itor. “I've just made the deal with Shear­son. He's stuck me up on rates a lit­tle. That's all right, though. The 'Clar­ion' fetch­es the dough. I want to start the new cam­paign with an in­ter­view on our prospects. Is it O.K.?”

“Come up and see Mr. El­lis,” said Hal.

Hav­ing led him to the ed­ito­ri­al of­fice, Hal sat down to work, but found no es­cape from his thoughts. There was but one thing to do: he must have it out at once with Dr. Sur­taine. He tele­phoned the fac­to­ry for an ap­point­ment. Sharp-​eared Mc­Quig­gan caught the call.

“That my old pal, Andy?” said he. “Gimme a shot at him while you've got him on the wire, will you?”

Cheery, not to say chirpy, was the min­ing pro­mot­er's greet­ing pro­ject­ed in­to the trans­mit­ter which Hal turned over to him. Straight­way, how­ev­er, a change came o'er his blithe spir­it.

“Some­thing's bit­ing the old geezer,” he in­formed Hal and El­lis. “Seems to have a grouch. Says he's com­ing over, pron­to--right quick.”

Five min­utes lat­er, while Mr. Mc­Quig­gan was run­ning over some proofs which he had brought with him, Dr. Sur­taine walked in­to the of­fice. There was about him a formidable smooth­ness, as of pol­ished met­al. He greet­ed his old friend with a nod and a cool “Back again, I see, Elpy.”

“And do­ing busi­ness at the old stand,” re­joined his friend. “Wor­thing­ton's the place where the dol­lars grow, all right.”

“Grow, _and_ stay,” said Dr. Sur­taine.

“Mean­ing?” in­quired Mc­Quig­gan so­lic­itous­ly.

“That you've over-​med­icat­ed this field.”

“Have I got any dol­lars away from you, Andy?”

“No. But you have from my peo­ple.”

“Well, their mon­ey's as good to buy booze with as any­body else's, I reck­on.”

Dr. Sur­taine had sat down, di­rect­ly op­po­site the vis­itor, fronting him eye-​to-​eye. Noth­ing loath, Mc­Quig­gan ac­cept­ed the chal­lenge. His hard, brisk voice, with a sub-​tone of the snarl, crossed the Doc­tor's strong, heavy ut­ter­ance like a rapi­er en­gag­ing a bat­tle-​axe. Both as­sumed a suavi­ty of man­ner felt to be just at the break­ing point. The two spec­ta­tors sat, sur­prised and ex­pec­tant.

“I don't sup­pose,” said Dr. Sur­taine, af­ter a pause, “there's any use try­ing to get you to re­fund.”

“Still stick­ing out for the mon­ey-​back-​if-​not-​sat­is­fied rack­et--in the oth­er fel­low's busi­ness, eh, Andy? Bet­ter prac­tice it in your own.”

“Hal,”--Dr. Sur­taine turned to his son,--“has Mc­Quig­gan brought in a new batch of copy?”

“So I un­der­stand.”

“The 'Clar­ion' mustn't run it.”

“The hell it mustn't!” said Mc­Quig­gan.

“It's crooked,” said the quack blunt­ly.

The pro­mot­er laughed. “A hot one, you are, to talk about crooked­ness.”

“He's pay­ing his ad­ver­tis­ing bills out of my peo­ple's pay en­velopes!” ac­cused Dr. Sur­taine.

“How's that, Doc?” asked El­lis.

“Why, when he was here be­fore, he spent some time around the Certi­na plant and got ac­quaint­ed with the de­part­ment man­agers and a lot of the oth­ers, and damn me!” cried Dr. Sur­taine, grin­ning in spite of his wrath, “if he didn't sting 'em all for stock.”

“How do you know they're stung?” in­quired El­lis.

“From an ex­pert on the ground. I got anx­ious when I found my own peo­ple were in it, and had a man go out there from Phoenix. He re­ports that the Streaky Moun­tain hasn't got a thing but ex­pec­ta­tions and hard­ly that.”

“Well, you didn't say there was any­thing more, did you?” in­quired the bland Mc­Quig­gan.

“I? I didn't say?”

“Yes, _you_. You got up the ads.”

“Well--well--well, of all the nerve!” cried Dr. Sur­taine, grievous­ly ap­peal­ing to the uni­verse at large. “I got 'em up! You gave me the ma­te­ri­al, didn't you?”

“Sure, did I. Hot stuff it was, too.”

“Hot bunk! And to flim-​flam my own peo­ple with it, too!”

“Any­body that works in your joint ought to be wise to the bunk game,” sug­gest­ed Mc­Quig­gan.

“I'll tell you one thing: you don't run any more of it in this town.”

“Maybe I don't and then again maybe I do. It won't be as good as your copy, p'r'aps. But it'll get _some_ coin, I reck­on. Take a look,” he taunt­ed, and tossed his proofs to the oth­er.

The quack broke forth at the first glance. “Look here! You claim fifty thou­sand tons of cop­per in sight.”

“So there is.”

“With a tele­scope, I sup­pose.”

“Well, tele­scope's sight, ain't it? You wouldn't try to hear through one, would you?”

“And $200,000.00 worth, ready for milling,” con­tin­ued the crit­ic.

“Print­er's er­ror in the dec­imal point,” re­turned the oth­er, with airy im­pu­dence. “Move it two to the left. Keno! There you have it: $2000.00.”

“Very in­ge­nious, Mr. Mc­Quig­gan,” said Hal. “But you're prac­ti­cal­ly ad­mit­ting that your ads. are faked.”

“Ad­mit­tin' noth­in'! I of­fer you the ads. and I've got the ready stuff to pay for 'em.”

“And you think that is all that's nec­es­sary?”

“Sure do I!”

“Mr. Mc­Quig­gan,” re­marked El­lis, “has prob­ably been read­ing our able ed­ito­ri­al on the re­formed and chas­tened pol­icy of the 'Clar­ion.'”

Hal turned an an­gry red. “That doesn't com­mit us to ac­cept­ing swin­dles.”

“Don't it?” queried Mc­Quig­gan. “Since when did you get so pick-​an'-choosy?”

“Straight ad­ver­tis­ing,” an­nounced Dr. Sur­taine, “has been the un­vary­ing pol­icy of this pa­per since my son took it over.”

“Straight!” vo­cif­er­at­ed Mc­Quig­gan. “_Straight?_ Ladies and gents: the well-​known Sur­taine Fam­ily will now put on their screamin' farce en­ti­tled 'Hon­esty is the Best Pol­icy.'”

“When you're through play­ing the clown--” be­gan Hal.

“Straight ad­ver­tis­ing,” pur­sued the oth­er. “Did I re­al­ly hear them sweet words in Andy Cer­tain's voice? No! Say, some­body ring an alarm-​clock on me. I can't wake up.”

“I think we've heard enough from you, Mc­Quig­gan,” warned Hal.

“Do you!” The pro­mot­er sprang from his chair and all the la­tent ven­om of his tem­per fumed and stung in the words he poured out. “Well, take an­oth­er think. I've got some things to tell you, young feller. Don't you come the high-​and-​holy on me. You and your smooth, big, pho­ny stuffed-​shirt of a fa­ther.”

“Here, you!” shout­ed the lead­ing cit­izen thus in­ju­ri­ous­ly des­ig­nat­ed, but the oth­er's voice slashed through his protest like a blade through pulp.

“Certi­na! Ho-​oh! War­rant­ed to cure con­sump­tion, warts, heart-​dis­ease, soft­en­ing of the brain, and the bloody pip! And what is it? Mor­phine and booze.”

“You're a liar,” thun­dered the out­raged pro­pri­etor: “Ten thou­sand dol­lars to any one who can show a grain of mor­phine in it.”

“Changed the for­mu­la, have you? Pure Food Law scared you out of the dope, eh? Well, even at that it's the same old bunk. What about your tes­ti­mo­ni­als? Fake 'em, and forge 'em, and bribe and black­mail for 'em and then stand up to me and pull the pi­ous plate-​push­er stuff about be­ing straight. Oh, my Gawd! It'd make a strad­dle-​bug spit at the sun, to hear you. Why, I'm no saint, but the med­ical line was too strong for my stom­ach. I got out of it.”

“Yes, you did, you dirty lit­tle dol­lar-​snatch­er! You got put of it in­to jail for ped­dling raw gin--.”

“Don't you go rak­ing up old muck with me, you rot­ten big poi­son­er!” roared Mc­Quig­gan: “or you'll get the hot end of it. How about that girl that went bat­ty af­ter tak­ing Cert--”

“Wait a mo­ment! Fa­ther! Please!” Hal broke in, aghast at this dis­play. “We're not dis­cussing the med­ical busi­ness. We're talk­ing ad­ver­tis­ing. Mc­Quig­gan, yours is re­fused. We don't run that class of mat­ter in the 'Clar­ion.'”

“No? Since when? You'd bet­ter con­sult an oculist, young Sur­taine.”

“If ev­er this pa­per car­ried such a glar­ing fake as your Streaky Moun­tain--”

“Stop right there! Stop! look! and lis­ten!” He caught up the day's is­sue from the floor and flaunt­ed it, rid­dling the flim­sy sur­face with the stiff­ened fin­ger of in­dict­ment. “Look at it! Look at this ad.--and this--and this.” The pa­per was rent with the ve­he­mence of his in­di­ca­tion. “Put my copy next to that, and it'd come to life and squirm to get away.”

“Noth­ing there but what ev­ery pa­per takes,” de­fend­ed El­lis.

“Ev­ery pa­per'd be glad to take my stuff, too. Why, Streaky Moun­tain copy is the Holy Bible com­pared to what you've got here. Take a slant at this: 'Con­sump­tion Cured in Three Months.'--'Can­cer Cured or your Mon­ey Back.'--Catarrh dopes, headache cures, germ-​killers, ba­by-​soothers, nerve-​builders,--the whole stinkin' lot. Don't I know 'em! Ei­ther sug­ar pills that couldn't cure a bel­ly-​ache, or hell's-​brew of mor­phine and booze. Certi­na ain't the worst of 'em, any more than it's the best. I may squeeze a few dol­lars out of easy boobs, but you, Andy Cer­tain, you and your young whelp here, you're playin' the poor suck­ers for their lives. And then you're too lily-​fin­gered to touch a min­ing propo­si­tion be­cause there's a gam­ble in it!”

He crum­pled the pa­per in his sinewy hands, hurled it to the floor, kicked it high over Dr. Sur­taine's head, and stalk­ing across to Hal's desk, slapped down his proofs on it with a vi­olence that jarred the whole struc­ture.

“You run that,” he snarled, “or I'll hire the biggest hall in Wor­thing­ton and tell the whole town what I've just been telling you.”

His face, fur­rowed and threat­en­ing, was thrust down close to Hal's. Thus low­ered, the eyes came lev­el with a strip of print, past­ed across the in­ner an­gle of the desk.

“'Whose Bread I Eat, his Song I Sing,'” he read. “What's that?”

“A mot­to,” said McGuire El­lis. “The com­plete guide to cor­rect jour­nal­is­tic con­duct. Put there, lest we for­get.”

“H'm!” said Mc­Quig­gan, puz­zled. “It's in the right place, all right, all right. Well, does my ad. go?”

“No,” said Hal. “But I'm much obliged to you, Mc­Quig­gan.”

“You go to hell. What're you obliged to me for?” said the vis­itor sus­pi­cious­ly.

“For the truth. I think you've told it to me. Any­way you've made me tell it to my­self.”

“I guess I ain't told you much you don't know about your snide busi­ness.”

“You have, though. Go ahead and hire your hall. But--take a look at to-​mor­row's 'Clar­ion' be­fore you make your speech. Now, good-​day to you.”

Mc­Quig­gan, won­der­ing and a lit­tle sub­dued by a cer­tain qui­et res­olu­tion in Hal's speech, went, beck­on­ing El­lis af­ter him for ex­pli­ca­tion. Hal turned to his fa­ther.

“I don't sup­pose,” he be­gan halt­ing­ly, “that you could have told me all this your­self.”

“What?” asked Dr. Sur­taine, con­scious­ly on the de­fen­sive.

“About the med­ical ads.”

“Mc­Quig­gan's a sore-​head”--be­gan the Doc­tor.

“But you might have told me about Certi­na, as I've been liv­ing on Certi­na mon­ey.”

“There's noth­ing to tell.” All the self-​as­sur­ance had gone out of the quack's voice.

“Fa­ther, does Certi­na cure Bright's dis­ease?”

“Cure? Why, Boy­ee, what _is_ a cure?”

“Does it cure it?” in­sist­ed Hal.

“Sit down and cool off. You've let that skunk, Mc­Quig­gan, get you all ex­cit­ed.”

“This be­gan be­fore Mc­Quig­gan.”

“Then you've been talk­ing to some jeal­ous doc­tor-​crank.”

“For God's sake, Fa­ther, an­swer my plain ques­tion.”

“Why, there's no such thing as an ac­tu­al cure for Bright's dis­ease.”

“Don't you say in the ad­ver­tise­ments that Certi­na will cure it?”

“Oh, ad­ver­tise­ments!” re­turned the quack with an un­easy smile. “No­body takes an ad­ver­tise­ment for gospel.”

“I'm an­swered. Will it cure di­abetes?”

“No medicine will. No doc­tor can. They're in­cur­able dis­eases. Certi­na will do as much--”

“Is it true that al­co­hol sim­ply has­tens the course of the dis­ease?”

“Au­thor­ities dif­fer,” said the quack war­ily. “But as the dis­ease is in­cur­able--”

“Then it's all lies! Lies and mur­der!”

“You're ex­cit­ed, Boy-​ee,” said the char­la­tan with hag­gard for­bear­ance. “Let me ex­plain for a mo­ment.”

“Isn't it pret­ty late for ex­pla­na­tions be­tween you and me?”

“This is the gist of the pro­pri­etary trade,” said the Doc­tor, pick­ing his words care­ful­ly. “Most dis­eases cure them­selves. Medicine isn't much good. Doc­tors don't know a great deal. Now, if a patent medicine braces a pa­tient up and gives him courage, it does all that can be done. Then, the ad­ver­tis­ing in­spires con­fi­dence in the cure and that's half the bat­tle. There's a lot in Chris­tian Sci­ence, and a lot in com­mon be­tween Chris­tian Sci­ence and the pro­pri­etary busi­ness. Both work on the mind and help it to cure the body. But the pro­pri­etary trade throws in a few drugs to brace up the sys­tem, al­lay symp­toms, and push along the good work. There you have Certi­na.”

Hal shook his head in dogged mis­ery. “It can't cure. You ad­mit it can't cure. And it may kill, in the very cas­es where it promis­es to cure. How could you take mon­ey made that way?”

A flash of cyn­icism hard­ened the hand­some old face. “Some­body's go­ing to make a liv­ing off the great Amer­ican suck­er. If it wasn't us, it'd be some­body else.” He paused, sighed, and in a phrase summed up and crys­tal­lized the whole phi­los­ophy of the med­ical quack: “Life's a cut-​throat game, any­way.”

“And we're liv­ing on the blood,” said Hal. “It's a good thing,” he added slow­ly, “that I didn't know you as you are be­fore Mil­ly Neal's death.”

“Why so?”

“Be­cause,” cried the son fierce­ly, “I'd have pub­lished the whole truth of how she died and why, in the 'Clar­ion.'”

“It isn't too late yet,” re­tort­ed Dr. Sur­taine with pained dig­ni­ty, “if you wish to strike at the fa­ther who hasn't been such a bad fa­ther to you. But would you have told the truth of your part in it?”

“My part in it?” re­peat­ed Hal, in dull puz­zle­ment. “You mean the ad?”

“You know well enough what I mean. Boy-​ee, Boy-​ee,”--there was an edge of gen­uine agony in the sonorous voice,--“we've drawn far apart, you and I. Is all the wrong on my side? Can you judge me so harsh­ly, with your own con­science to an­swer?”

“What I've got on my con­science you've put there. You've made me turn back on ev­ery prin­ci­ple I have. I've dis­hon­ored my­self and my of­fice for you. You've cost me the re­spect of the men I work with, and the faith of the best friend I've got in the world.”

“The _best_ friend, Boy-​ee?” ques­tioned the Doc­tor gen­tly.

“The best friend: McGuire El­lis.”

Hal's gaze met his fa­ther's. And what he saw there all but un­manned him. From the liq­uid depths of the old quack's eyes, big and soft like an an­imal's, there welled two great tears, to trick­le slow­ly down the set face.

Hal turned and stum­bled from the of­fice.

Hard­ly know­ing whith­er he went, he turned in at the first open door, which chanced to be Shear­son's. There he sat un­til his self-​con­trol re­turned. As the af­ter­math of his anger there re­mained with him a grim de­ter­mi­na­tion. It was im­plic­it in his voice, as he ad­dressed Shear­son, who walked in up­on him.

“Cut out ev­ery line of med­ical from the pa­per.”

“When?” gasped Shear­son.

“Now. For to-​mor­row's pa­per.”

“But, Mr. Sur­taine--”

“Ev­ery--damned--line. And if any of it ev­er gets back, the man re­spon­si­ble los­es his job.”

“Yes, sir,” said the cowed and amazed Shear­son.

Hal re­turned to his sanc­tum, to find El­lis in his own place and Dr. Sur­taine gone.

“El­lis, you put that mot­to on my desk.”

“Yes.”

“What for?”

“Lest we for­get,” re­peat­ed El­lis.

“Not much dan­ger of that,” replied his em­ploy­er bit­ter­ly. “Now, I want you to take it down.”

“Is that an or­der?”

“Would you obey it if it were?”

“No.”

“You'd re­sign first?”

“Yes.”

“Then I'll take it down my­self.”

With his let­ter-​open­er he pried the of­fen­sive strip loose, tore it across thrice, and scat­tered the pieces on the floor.

“Mr. El­lis,” said he for­mal­ly, “here­after no med­ical ad­ver­tis­ing will be ac­cept­ed for or pub­lished in the 'Clar­ion.' The same rule ap­plies to fraud­ulent ad­ver­tis­ing of any kind. I wish you and the oth­er mem­bers of the staff to act as cen­sors for the ad­ver­tis­ing.”

“Yes, sir,” said McGuire El­lis.

He turned back to his desk, and sprawled his el­bows on it. His head lapsed low­er and low­er un­til it at­tained the fa­mil­iar pos­ture of rest. But McGuire El­lis was not sleep­ing. He was think­ing.