NO advertising patronage was lost to The Guardian as the result of the luncheon-conference. But Jeremy Robson’s offer to let a committee investigate his circulation was costly. More than fifteen per cent of The Guardian’s list proved either “phony” or dubious. Jeremy reconstituted his rate card in accordance with the actual figures, and cut recklessly into his free list. Appeased by this practical and to them profitable concession, the Retailers’ Association abandoned the issue of rebates. For the time, at least, they accepted the new proprietor’s distasteful decision as to “readers.” The matter of “courtesies” extended to advertisers was left in abeyance. That was sure to come up in the inevitable course of events. The general status was that of a truce, with one side wary and the other disgruntled.
Unsatisfactory though this might be to the mercantile element, it was more so to the newspaper. For The Guardian simply could not make a living at the reduced rates. There was but one thing to be done: increase circulation, thereby giving the paper augmented advertising value, and raise the advertising rates proportionately. It had been agreed between the Retailers’ Association committee and Jeremy that in view of his reduction of tariff, there would be no opposition to an increase when the circulation should warrant it. Ellison and the other committeemen did not believe that The Guardian could add to its circulation materially. Jeremy and his general manager did. They did n’t know just how. They only knew that it had to, or pass ignominiously out of existence!
So they took the customary business-man’s gamble. In the hope of making money they spent money. The paper began to swell out and look lively and prosperous. But Jeremy’s bank account evidenced the ravages of a galloping consumption. And though the public talked about The Guardian and speculated interestedly upon its future, it did not fall over itself to subscribe. It waited to see and be convinced. The public has that habit.
Meanwhile two able gentlemen with no ostensible interest in journalism were quietly watching and estimating the course of The Guardian. President Montrose Clark, of the Fenchester Public Utilities Corporation, and his legal aide-de-camp Judge Selden Dana, a pair far more potent in Fenchester’s political affairs than Fenchester’s undisceming citizenry ever dreamed, were concerned with the newspapers as affecting their own plans, and were specially concerned with Jeremy Robson’s newspaper because they possessed no reliable data on young Mr. Robson.
“Do you know him?” asked Judge Dana.
“No,” replied Montrose Clark, whose interview with the “rippawtah” of The Record had failed to leave any memory of the young man’s name.
“What do you think of The Guardian since he got it?”
“It’s silly,” pronounced Mr. Clark loftily.
“Silly? Would you call it silly?”
“Ihavecalled it silly. It is beginning to show leanings toward a half-baked radicalism.”
“Robson is very young.”
“Even socialistic tendencies,” pursued the other.
“Socialism is anything that holds up our programme,” grinned the lawyer, who occasionally permitted himself the private luxury of frankness.
The public utilitarian frowned. “Have you been reading the articles on tax-dodgers?”
“I have.”
“What is the purpose of them, if not to stir up socialistic unrest?”
“Sensation, I should say. The series has been popular. When Mr. Average Citizen reads in his paper that he is being taxed twice as heavily as Mr. Rich Man next door, he’s interested. He begins to think the paper is a devil of a paper. He talks about it. That helps.”
“Suppose The Guardian should attack Us on the tax issue?”
“That also would be interesting,” remarked Dana. “But they won’t. Our trail is too well covered. It would take them a year to get at the facts.”
“But what’s the young fool driving at, anyway, Dana?” The lawyer rubbed his long angular jaw, and the somnolent look of his eyes deepened into musing. “I figure he’s making a bid for the radical support. The radicals have never had a show here, and he may be able to rally them to him.”
“What do they amount to, the radicals! A newspaper has got to have the support of people with money.”
“That’s the accepted theory,” admitted the lawyer. “What do you know of young Robson’s financial status!”
“Quite a bit. I handled the sale for Wymett.”
“Yes; yes. A good bargain for Wymett. Eh?”
“A stroke of fortune.”
“How much has Robson got behind him?”
“Not much. Twenty thousand. Perhaps twenty-five.”
Mr. Clark looked relieved. “I think we need have no misgivings.”
“I’m not so sure. A paper with radical leanings might find material in that transfer ordinance of ours when it comes up again. Even some of our good friends balk at that as pretty raw.”
“An essential step to our expansion, Dana,” said the public utilitarian blandly.
“Exactly. But an uncharitable mind mightn’t see it that way. Which reminds me: Embree is threatening a legislative investigation if the ordinance goes through.”
“Local matters are no affair of Embree’s,” declared the other angrily. “Fortunately he has no newspaper backing.”
“Has n’t he? I wish I were sure.”
“You don’t think that young Robson has sold out to Embree already?”
“No.”
“Very well, then—”
“Not sold out. It is n’t a question of cash. This boy is n’t A. M. Wymett.”
“Nevertheless a newspaper is a business proposition,” opined Montrose Clark dryly.
“It ought to be. Much simpler if it were. But this boy is a bit of a sentimentalist. I’m afraid he’s in the way of being influenced by Smiling Mart’s line of clap-trap.”
“Then we must act promptly.” The public utilitarian sat, thoughtful. “We’ll start a campaign of public education on the transfer question, through the newspapers,” he decided. “Including, of course, The Guardian.”
“Straight-out, a-d-v kind of advertising?”
“Hardly. The usual thing. Well-prepared articles. Perhaps a careful editorial or two. Do you think it too early?”
“Not too early. Too late for The Guardian. It won’t take ’em.”
“Oh, I think it will,” returned the other comfortably. “At our special rate.”
“Not at any price, the editorials. The ‘readers,’ yes. But they’ll have the ‘a-d-v’ sign at the bottom. Maybe the ‘P.-U.’ trade-mark also.”
Montrose Clark’s face puffed red. “Where do you get your information?”
“From inside,” answered Dana, whose special virtue and value was to be “inside” on all available sources of information. “Those are the new orders.”
“Robson’s?”
“I suppose so. Andrew Galpin may have a hand in it. He’s in general charge.”
“I think I can persuade those young gentlemen,” remarked Montrose Clark sardonically, “that it is not to their interest to impose troublesome restrictions upon the corporation.”
He pressed a button. There arrived upon the scene, with an effect of automatic response, that smooth, flawless, noiseless, expressionless piece of human mechanism, Edward Garson, the hand-perfected private secretary who, besides his immediate duties about the great man’s person, acted as go-between in minor matters, press-agent, and advertising manager for the Fenchester Public Utilities Corporation. Concerning him, Judge Dana had once remarked that the queerest thing about it was that it also had brains.
“Garson,” barked Montrose Clark, in the tone which he deemed appropriate.
The hand-perfected secretary bowed.
“Bring in The Guardian advertising account.”
The secretary bowed again and disappeared. Almost immediately he was back, bowing once more over a neatly typed single sheet of paper.
“What is our total expenditure in The Guardian for the current year, up to date?”
“For display advertising, eleven hundred and forty-seven dollars, sixty cents. For reading matter, two hundred and seventy-five.”
“That includes editorial matter?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And in The Record?”
“Seventeen hundred and twenty, sir. All display. They make no charge for editorials or readers, you recall, sir.”
“True. We pay them a higher rate for display, and the editorial support is—er—”
“By way of gratitude,” suggested Dana.
“Exactly. Do you think, Dana, that either paper is in a position to discard the P.-U.‘s support?”
“Just a moment,” said the lawyer. “That display advertising bill of The Guardian’s; what was the bill as rendered?”
Looking to Montrose Clark for permission and receiving it in a nod, the hand-perfected secretary replied, “Sixteen hundred dollars.”
“Scaled down to a net of about eleven hundred and fifty.”
“Yes. With discounts and rebates.”
“Wymett fooled Robson worse than I had supposed. The young fool bought on the basis of the book rates. Discounts and rebates are going to be an unpleasant surprise to him.”
“All of which will make him the easier to handle.”
“Maybe. With gloves.”
“It is not my habit,” said the local potentate austerely, “to concern myself deeply with other people’s over-sensitiveness, when it is a matter of business.”
“Go easy with him,” insisted the other. “He’s got a temper. There’s a kind of a you-be-damned-ness about him. He’s a little puffed up with his new sense of power, and we’ve got to allow for that.”
“Sense of power?” The magnate looked puzzled for the moment. “Oh, you mean his paper!” He laughed. “All right, Dana. I’ll be tactful with him. But of course I shan’t tolerate any nonsense.”
The retort, “I doubt if he will, either,” was on the tip of the lawyer’s tongue. He suppressed it. It would only have irritated Montrose Clark’s vanity which, under friction, was prone to develop prickly heat.
Let him find out for himself how to handle human nettles if he could n’t take cannier men’s advice!
JUDGE DANA’S surmise as to Senator Embree and The Guardian partook of the genius of prophecy. “Smiling Mart” had been waiting to assure himself about the new control of the paper. Conviction grew within him that Jeremy Robson was the man he was looking for: that the seed planted with forethought in the mind of the unimportant Record reporter was now bringing forth harvest in The Guardian. Embree decided upon open measures.
Returning from a hasty luncheon one day, Jeremy found his den irradiated by the famous Embree smile. He was glad to see it. At the points of intersection where politics and newspaper work cross, he had encountered the leader from the Northern Tier perhaps half a dozen times since their first interview, and had liked him better each time, though their talks had been on the professional and impersonal order. No conversation with Martin Embree, however, was ever wholly impersonal. He was too intense a humanist for that. As the Legislature had adjourned for the summer, Jeremy was surprised to see Embree at the capital.
“Hello, Senator,” he said, shaking hands. “What brings you down here in all this heat and dust?”
“You,” smiled his visitor.
“Well, I apologize. I did n’t do it purposely. But I’m glad to see you.”
“So here you are, a real newspaper owner. Congratulations, by the way.” Jeremy nodded. “Do you remember a little talk we had in my room, one night?”
“Very well.”
“This is the next stage in the fairy-tale. Well, I talked pretty openly that evening. As a rule I don’t give myself away in chance conversation.”
Harking back, Jeremy failed to recall that the rising politician had given himself away, in any sense. He leaned back in his chair and waited.
“I’ve been watching your course with The Guardian,” continued the Senator earnestly. “I wanted to see which way you were going. Now I know.”
“What convinced you?”
“Your editorial on the tax-dodging railroads. That,” said Senator Embree, his brilliant smile playing again, “was a soaker. A soaker! I expect you heard from that.”
“I did.”
“Did they yelp?”
“They did.”
“Threaten?”
“What could they threaten?”
“That’s true; what could they?” repeated the other thoughtfully. “They would n’t know where to have you. You’re an undetermined quantity to them. And as such they don’t know your price. Have they tried to find it out?”
“Not openly enough to be caught at it.”
“They’ve been trying to get at mine ever since I came to the Legislature as a grass-green young kid of an Assemblyman. I guess they’ll find out yours about the time they find out mine. And, for a further guess, the two prices will be about the same. Eh?”
“That also is possible,” conceded the editor demurely.
“The Record did n’t spoil you. I was afraid it might. They’re so slick and respectable over there! But as soon as you began to get your muscle into The Guardian’s editorials, I saw which side you were on. And the tax attack settled it in my mind that you’re for the public and against the corporation grafters.”
“I’m against the corporations when they don’t play fair.”
“That’s good enough for me! They never do play fair. Not in politics.”
“I don’t go that far,” said Jeremy.
“You will,” smiled the other. “Give you time. You’ll come to it. You’re with us and you’re going to be with us stronger and stronger.”
“It depends on who ‘us’ is, and what policies are involved,” replied the editor, not wholly pleased at being thus confidently catalogued.
“The radicals. The clean, common voters who believe that the people should run their own government for themselves.”
“So far, all right. I’m for that.”
“I knew you were. And here I am.” The smile now fairly surcharged the little office.
“And here you are. What can I do for you, Senator?”
“Wrong, my boy! Wrong for once. It’s the other way around.”
“What can you do for me, then?”
The smile was replaced by a look of candor and earnestness. “Mr. Robson, you’ve got to increase the sale of this paper, have n’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I can boost the circulation of The Guardian a thousand copies. Perhaps fifteen hundred.”
“Will you take the job of circulation manager?” asked Jeremy, smiling.
“That’s another point. I’ll come to that later. Now, there’s no bluff about this, Robson. I’m in dead earnest.”
“If you can tell me how to put on circulation without its costing all I’ve got—”
“It’ll cost you nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“Then it will be different from any circulation scheme I’ve heard of yet.”
“Listen. Up in the Northern Tier I’m strong. They know me. They believe in me. If I pass the word that The Guardian is my organ—”
“The Guardian is nobody’s organ.”
“I understand. The mouthpiece of our policies, I should have said. The policies and principles you and I stand for, reform and anti-dollar-domination. If I pass that word about The Guardian they’ll take it like the Bible.”
“There might be something in that,” conceded the editor, who knew the almost idolatrous quality of Embree’s following in his own district.
“Make no mistake about it. It’ll mean four or five hundred copies in my own town, and it ought to run to a thousand more in the county outside.”
“That won’t help much in getting local advertising, here in Fenchester.”
“No. But it will help out your foreign advertising.”
“How do you know so much about the newspaper game?” asked the editor, struck by the other’s use of the technical term. “Ever been in it?”
“I study everything that has a bearing on politics in this State. I could pretty nearly tell you how much The Guardian stands to lose this year.”
“Don’t!” said Jeremy, with a wry face.
“Unless you can raise your rates. And I’m showing you the way. Right here in Fenchester, as soon as the common people are satisfied that you really represent their interests, subscriptions will flood you.”
Suspicion of the phrase beset Jeremy. “I’m not going in for any demagogue, yellow journal stuff.”
“Nobody wants you to. Just a decent, clean, fair-minded, progressive radicalism. If I can stand up in my next campaign and say honestly that there is a newspaper at the State capital, in the stronghold of old-line politics and graft, that represents what I stand for, that newspaper is going to boom. And I’m ready to do it.”
“On what terms?”
“None.”
“Just out of regard for my fascinating personality?” Martin Embree’s smile appeared again, conciliatory, persuasive, earnest. “Let’s understand each other, Robson. I’m convinced that you’re on the level. That’s the first point. I’m convinced that you’re honestly a radical, even if you’re a mild one. That’s the Second. Barring differences on minor policies which are bound to arise between independent-minded men, you and I stand for the same principles. You know my motivating ambition?”
“The governorship,” replied Jeremy innocently.
A furrow of annoyance appeared between the lofty brows of the Senator. “The ambition of my life,” he said emphatically, “is to serve the people of this State by delivering our government out of the clutches of the corporations. To that end I will accept any office, high or low, within the gift of the voters.”
Oratorical as was the delivery, there was a certain ring of enthusiasm which went far to convince the editor. In the years to come, of constant alliance with Martin Embree, Robson satisfied himself of the man’s essential devotion to the cause which he had made his own, a devotion second only to the monstrous egotism which subordinated all causes and all principles to his own rodent ambition, or, rather, merged and absorbed them in that ambition.
“Of course; of course,” apologized the editor. “But youdowant to be Governor, don’t you?”
“I’m going to be Governor,” was the positive response. “Not all their money can stop me. This campaign of mine for reelection to the Senate is really a preliminary skirmish for the bigger thing. I could be reelected without lifting a finger, so far as that goes. But I want to hammer home the State issues. And if you and I hammer at the same time, it is n’t going to do either of us a bit of harm! By the way, you ought to have agents on the ground to boost your circulation in the places where I campaign. Who’s your circulation manager?”
“A routine scrub. No good. I’m shipping him. Do you happen to know of any one?”
“Yes. I’ve got the very man for you, if he’ll come. Max Verrall, a live wire on The Forreston Tribune. He’s a youngster, but a hustler. I think I can get him for you.”
“I’ll take him on your say-so.”
“Now, let me give you a pointer or two on getting hold of the country districts. We’re streaky on nationalities out through this State. There’s a point to play for. Get after their feelings for the home country with a tactful editorial or a bit of translated matter now and then if you can lay your hands on it. Tickle their little vanities. That’s what I do on my speaking tours. If it’s a Swedish community, I tell ’em the Scandahoovians are the backbone of the Middle West. In a German district—and the State is thick with ’em—I boost German efficiency, the system to which the rest of the world goes to school.”
“Speaking of Germansandschools,” remarked Robson; “I’m told that they don’t even teach in English in some of the country districts. I’ve been thinking of starting a campaign on that, one of these days. Americanization—that ought to be a good slogan.”
“Off it, my boy!” said the Senator emphatically. “Hara-kiri is cheaper. Nobody is so touchy as your German-American on the subject of language and race. Don’t butt into a stone wall.”
“Wymett had a pet theory that Germany is getting ready for a world-war and the German-Americans are already at their propaganda to influence this country.”
“Bosh! I never could quite make out whether Wymett was more crazy than crooked, orvice versa.”
“Just the same, I’ve noticed that quite a little reprint stuff boosting Germany drifts into this office. Anecdotes about the Kaiser and that sort of thing.”
“Print ’em! Print ’em all. It’ll make the paper solid just where you most need support.”
“So I do, some of ’em, on their merits. It’s good stuff when fillers are needed. Only, when the propaganda side is too plain, I can it.”
“Get your mind off this propaganda notion,” pleaded his adviser. “The Germans are the best element of our citizenship to-day, and any man or institution that goes up against them isthrough. Some lunatics are trying to make a political issue of it. Magnus Laurens is. And they’re talking of running him for Governor next time, because they think they’ll need a respectable figurehead rather than one of the old, discredited gang to beat me with. Lord! I’d ask nothing better than to have Laurens against me, with his crank Know-Nothing conservatism that he calls Americanism.”
“I liked Mr. Laurens,” said Jeremy.
“You won’t when you’ve fought him as long as I have. Speaking of Germans, do you know Emil Bausch?”
“Only by sight.”
“He’s president of the Fenchester Deutscher Club and a mighty good friend of mine. He wants to get in touch with you.”
“He called once, but I was out.”
“Bausch is a little ponderous at first, but he’s all right when you get used to his ways. And he’s a power among the Germans. Don’t forget that.”
“Between you and Wymett and Eli Wade I’m not likely to forget the Germans,” laughed Jeremy.
“Wade? Poor chap. That was an unfortunate thing, that row of his. Well, he’s good on the feet, but weak in the head. Do you know Milliken, his crony?”
“Yes. He has n’t much use for you.”
“So he tells me every time he sees me. He considers me a slinker because he says I’m a Socialist at heart, but my heart is weak. Socialism is all right in its way. It’s a good vaccination, but a bad disease. Milliken’s working in your shop now, is n’t he?”
“Is he? I did n’t know it.”
“Stick to me and you’ll learn a lot of things,” smiled the politician. “Yes; he’s assistant to Big Girdner in the press-room. There’s another German for you, Girdner, and a good one. Well, I’ll tell Emil Bausch to come in again to see you.” At the door he paused. “By the way, are you likely to be interested personally in politics?”
“Office for myself? No. I’ve got my hands full now.”
“Later, perhaps. Well, if you should want anything for any of your friends, let me know. Perhaps I could manage it.”
“Could you? Locally?”
“I have a little influence locally, as a member of the Cities Improvement Committee.”
“We were speaking of Eli Wade a moment ago,” said Jeremy. “Something I wrote in The Record helped to get him out of a job he was very proud of.”
“The Public Schools Board? Yes: I know.”
“It was tough on the old boy. I’d like to make that up to him. Do you think you could get him put back?”
“Hardly that. You see, he got the Germans stirred up. He was out of place on the Board, anyway. Education is the special political bent of the German-Americans, you know. No; I’m afraid he’s finished there. But I might look around and see if there is n’t something else that would be just as good for him. It’s just the little honor of having an office that flatters his type of mind.”
“I’d be mightily obliged if you could,” said Jeremy. Martin Embree lost no time on the Bausch matter. On the morrow of his interview with Jeremy, there stalked into the editorial den of The Guardian, a tall, plethoric form buttoned within the frock coat and wearing the silk hat of high ceremony. The form introduced itself with a pronounced guttural accent as President Bausch, of the Deutscher Club, removed the hat, unbuttoned the coat, took from the breast-pocket thereof a document formidable with seals and tape, dandled the precious thing reverently in its hands, and addressed the editor with solemnity.
“I have here somedthing of grade importance for your paper.”
“Take a seat,” offered the editor.
The document-bearer complied. “Id is a ledder from Prindz Henry to the Cherman Singing Societies of America.”
“The original?” asked Jeremy, regarding the waxed and tapered curio with interest.
“Certainly not! The orichinal is mounted and framed in New York. This is the official copy.”
“It certainly looks official.”
“Id iss to be printed on Ventzday.”
“You mean that it is released for Wednesday.”
“Id iss to be printed on Ventzday,” reiterated the solemn emissary. “It should appear on your frondt page.”
Had Mr. Bausch but known it, this landed him full upon the editor’s pet toe: a toe, moreover, by this time angrily sore from over-frequent treadings. It was no time to be telling the new proprietor and editor of that free and untrammeled organ, The Guardian, what to and what not to print, or where to locate it.
“It will if it’s worth it.” stated that gentleman briefly.
“Wordth? Id issmostimportant,” his visitor assured him. “I have also here the material from which could be derifed a valuable editorial—”
“I can’t really see that such a letter, even though it be news, is a subject for editorial comment in The Guardian,” said Jeremy impatiently.
“Do you understandwhoothis ledder iss from?” cried the other. “Prindz Henry! Our Kaiser’s brother. And you tell me—”
“Whose Kaiser’s brother? Not mine.”
An incredulous and pious shock passed over the face of Mr. Emil Bausch. “Not yours! What matters you? The Kaiser of all goodt Chermans.” He contemplated the young man with gloomy severity. “If id was the Prindz of Vales I will bet you prindt it.”
Unversed in the carefully inbred German hatred and jealousy of all things British, Jeremy was mildly puzzled.
“Why so?” he asked.
“I bet you are a Inklish-lover. I bet you are a Cherman-hater. You would prindt the Prindz of Vales ledder. Hein?”
“Just as much or as little as I shall print of this.”
“As liddle? You will editthis; Prindz Henry’s own words?”
“If there’s too much of it.”
Dumbfounded at the proposed sacrilege, Mr. Bausch retrieved the precious roll and held it ready to thrust back into the pocket of the frock coat. “All or nothing,” he said.
“Nothing, then.”
“I will rebort this at the next meeting of the Deutscher Club,” growled the departing Teuton.
“Send us a copy of the minutes,” retorted the exasperated Jem. “Perhaps we’ll give you an editorial on those.”
He finished his writing and leaned back to meditate upon the possible results of this encounter when a well-remembered voice in the hall spoke his name, in a tone of business-like inquiry, to the youth on duty there.
“Come right in, Buddy,” called Jeremy.
Buddy Higman entered. He was dressed with extreme correctness, even to the extent of a whole and intact pair of suspenders, and his Sunday coat which he carried genteelly over his arm. Jeremy pointed an accusing finger at him.
“I know what you’ve come here for.”
“Gee!” murmured Buddy, impressed.
“You’ve come to tell me how to run my paper.”
“Me?” said Buddy.
“Or to order something put in.”
“What—”
“Or kept out.”
“No, sir,” said the astounded Buddy.
“What!! Don’t you know how to run my paper better than I do?”
“N-n-no, sir.”
“Then you’re unique in this town. Come to my arms. I mean, sit down. What’s that you’re trying to get out of your pocket?”
“A—a—a letter, sir.”
“Hah! I knew it. From the Kaiser!”
“No, sir. I don’t know him,” said Buddy nervously. “What are you calling me ‘sir’ for?” demanded Jeremy, suspicious at this unaccustomed courtesy.
“I want a job.”
“Oh, you want a job! Here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What are you good for in a newspaper office?”
“Nothin’.”
“That’s a fine recommendation. Do you expect to get the job on the strength of it?”
“Yes, sir. No, sir. On this.”
After much painful struggling the urchin succeeded in extracting from his pocket a note which he placed in Jeremy’s hands. At sight of it, all residue of raillery died out of the editor’s face. Though he had but once seen Marcia’s writing, he knew, at the first glance, the bold, frank, delicate, upright characters for hers. The note was undated. He read, with a feeling that the world had changed and sweetened about him, her words.
Dear Jem:
If you ever can, give Buddy a chance; some work that will not interfere with his schooling. I wish you two to look after each other.
And, oh, my dear, do please not quite altogether forget
Marcia
Jeremy sat in a long silence. The boy did not disturb it. Finally the young man looked up.
“When did she give you this, Buddy?”
“Before she went away.”
“All right. You get the job.”
“Thanks. I knew I would,” said the urchin confidently. “I c’n start in to-morrow.” He watched, sympathetically, the other fold the note and bestow it in his pocket.
“Mr. Robson,” he said. “She said a queer thing when she gimme the letter.”
“What was that?”
“She said—you know how her eyes get solemn and big and—and kinda light up, deep inside, when she means a thinghard—she said, ‘Buddy, I shall like to think that you and he are looking after each other.’ What did she mean by that?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to think it over.”
“Well, I been thinkin’ it over an’ I don’t get it.” He paused. Then with the self-centered simplicity of boyhood, “Mr. Robson, I miss her somethin’ fierce. You don’t know how I miss her.”
“Don’t I!” retorted Jeremy involuntarily, with a stab of pain.
“Nobody could,” stated the other with conviction.
So Jeremy and Buddy Higman became fellow-workers. Buddy’s job was decidedly indeterminate. It did n’t matter. In taking him on Jeremy was performing his first definite service to Marcia.
A week later his second was completed. Eli Wade was appointed a member of the Library Board. The Guardian chronicled the appointment more conspicuously than its unimportance as news warranted. Jeremy hoped that in some manner Marcia would see or hear of it.
MARTIN EMBREE more than fulfilled his word.
As if a royal patent had been issued in favor of The Guardian, the Senator’s zealous partisans of the Northern Tier bestowed upon it their patronage. Max Verrall, who revealed himself as a brisk and unfettered spirit with political ambitions and a slavish fervency for Embree, did the actual work of establishing the circulation in the district, and did it so well that Jeremy Robson had no misgivings in turning over to him the circulation managership of the paper.
In Fenchester the paper held about even for a time. The new features which Galpin had put on gained readers, though not as fast as he had hoped. To offset this, there had been some loss among the more rabid element of the Deutscher Club, Bausch having spread the report that the new ownership was anti-German. On his next visit to Fenchester, to deliver the formal address at a school dedication, Senator Embree reproached Jeremy for his tactlessness in handling the Prince Henry message.
“Don’t stick your fighting-jaw out at me, young Robson,” he added cheerily. “Keep that for your enemies. Now you put in a nice, good-tempered philosophic little editorial paragraph on the ‘entente cordiale’ line.” Jeremy began. “I’m da———”
“No, you’re not,” broke in the other. “Listen. Here’s the idea.” And he outlined an editorial so tactful, so deft, so diplomatic whilst still independently American in tone, that for sheer pleasure in good workmanship the editor agreed to adopt it.
“And I’ll square it with Bausch,” said Embree. His smile expanded and enfolded the other. “Better come hear me speak to-night. I ‘ll have something to say about The Guardian. Watch the effect of the spread of the gospel for the next few days.”
The one brief reference to the paper in Senator Embree’s address said little but implied much. Jeremy was inclined to be disappointed. He looked for no results. But the following day brought in thirty-seven new subscriptions, with others trailing in their wake at the rate of a dozen per day. Furthermore, a batch of letters to the editor urged upon him a more definite political stand, or invited (in one instance challenged) him to state his attitude regarding Embree and the new policies frankly. Since his taking over the paper, politics had been at slack tide in the State. Jeremy had wisely refrained from committing himself definitely. All his instinct was for independence of thought and speech. When the issues were cast, The Guardian would take its stand. But he had reckoned without that pervasive and acute political self-consciousness of the Middle West which expects every citizen to be definitely one thing or the other, and be it promptly! His tax editorials, he found, had already committed him in the general mind to the radical side. Whoever attacked the railroads was a Friend of the People. To be sure, Jeremy’s attack had been addressed to a few specific and flagrant instances; but the public does not discriminate finely. And Senator Embree’s word-of-mouth “gospel” had already premised for The Guardian a course which would considerably have surprised its proprietor.
That keen-scented legal prowler, Judge Selden Dana, became uneasy. Young Robson, he feared, was getting deep into “Smiling Mart’s” toils.
“It’s time we took a hand,” he warned Montrose Clark. “Don’t you think I’d better see Robson and have a talk with him?”
“I will do it myself,” said the public utilitarian. “I have had more experience than you in handling newspaper men.”
“All right. But—easy does it. Remember, this is no A. M. Wymett.”
“If it were, I should leave it entirely in your hands,” retorted the magnate.
Judge Dana left, reflecting pungently upon his employer’s capacity for unnecessarily disagreeable speeches.
“If he tries that on Robson he’ll get bumped, or I miss my guess,” he surmised, and found some satisfaction in the thought.
Nothing, however, could have been farther from the mind of President Clark. He purposed treating the young newspaper man kindly. Firmly, but kindly. Even benevolently. Point out to him the error he was committing: show him that he was unwittingly an enemy to civic interests and progress which could best be left to those equipped by experience and under Providence, for handling large affairs: indicate to him, delicately, wherein his own interests and those of his newspaper were consonant with the interests of such public benefactors as Montrose Clark and the P.-U. That was the way to handle a presumably reasonable young fellow with a property to consider! In his satisfied mind, the public utilitarian outlined the course of the conversation, with himself (naturally) as converser and his visitor contributing the antiphony of grateful assent. Summoning the hand-perfected private secretary, Mr. Clark entrusted to his reverent care a summons for Mr. Jeremy Robson.
The message was duly transferred to the ’phone. It found the editor imparting some instructions to his new office boy and loyal personal heeler, Burton Higman. At the call which informed him that the Fenchester P.-U. Corporation office was on the ’phone, Jeremy’s mind reverted to the interview of some months before when Mr. Montrose Clark had issued his god-like directions to the fuming but helpless “rippawtah” from The Record, and an unholy light shone in his eye.
“What is it?” he asked.
“This is Mr. Garson, Mr. Montrose Clark’s private secretary.”
“Go ahead.”
“Mr. Clark wishes to see you.”
“What about?”
“Is that necessary?” queried the voice, in a tone of startled rebuke.
“It’s usual.”
“He will doubtless explain, himself,” said the voice, after a pause.
“All right,” said Jeremy.
“Three o’clock this afternoon,” specified the great man’s mouthpiece, and shut off.
Such was the Montrose Clark method with inferiors. Time and the wish were stated. The place was assumed. A newspaper man was a natural inferior according to the Montrose Clark measure. The weak point of the theory, in this instance, was that the other party to the transaction had not subscribed to it. He returned to his writing. At three-ten the hand-perfected private secretary was on the ’phone again.
“Mr. Garson speaking. Mr. Clark is waiting.”
“So am I.”
“I don’t understand.” The tone was incredulous. “Put Mr. Clark on the ‘phone,” suggested the editor. “He may be quicker of comprehension.”
The suggestion was not adopted. But in fifteen minutes the secretary, one button of his black cutaway flagrantly unbuttoned, was being admitted to the den by Buddy Higman.
“This is most extraordinary, Mr. Robson,” he protested.
“What’s extraordinary in it? Mr. Clark wants to see me on business, I assume?”
“He does.”
“This is my place of business.”
“This is—you—you are going out of your way to be offensive,” accused the scandalized visitor.
“Not going out of my way at all. I’m sitting tight. You might have noticed that yourself.”
“Mr. Clark—that is to say, the Public Utilities Corporation has been a good friend to The Guardian.”
“It’s been reciprocated in the past,” returned Jeremy dryly.
“In the past? Am I to understand that the attitude of The Guardian toward the Corporation has changed?”
“If Mr. Wymett was accustomed to run around whenever Mr. Clark chose to push a button, it has. Them good old days,” said Jeremy enjoyably, “is gone forever.”
“Mr. Wymett returned courtesy for courtesies.”
“So shall I. When I receive the courtesies.”
“The advertising patronage—”
“Don’t talk to me about advertising,” broke in the editor. “The few dollars that your concern pays into our cash drawer don’t entitle Mr. Clark to regard this paper as his errand boy.”
Mr. Garson’s sensitive ear fixed upon the word “few.”
“We are n’t doing much advertising anywhere just now,” he explained with a conciliating purr. “There will be more soon. Quite soon, in fact. But there were other ways, you understand, in which Mr. Clark’s friendship was useful to The Guardian—to Mr. Wymett.”
“For example?”
“News items. Inside information. Advance information, I may say, on the stock market, for instance, amounting to really advantageous opportunities.”
“I see!”
“Such information is still—er—available.”
“I see, again. Would Mr. Clark confirm the proposition, do you think?”
The hand-perfected private secretary beamed. His mission, self-inspired, was prospering famously. “Undoubtedly,” he averred.
“In writing?”
“Mr. Clark’s word is—”
“As good as his bond. Naturally. I was merely thinking of such a letter not necessarily as a guarantee of good faith, but for publication.”
A thin, gray veil appeared to draw itself across Mr. Garson’s countenance, out of which his eyes stared with an aspect of surprise and fright. This animal had claws! “For publication?” he gasped.
“That’s it. You don’t think he’d do it? Well, he’s wise—to that extent, anyway. Now, you go back and tell Clark that when we open up for bribes we’ll take cash—and publish the news in the paper.”
“What did you do to little Eddie Garson?” asked Andrew Galpin, coming in a moment later. “I just met him in the hall.”
Jeremy explained.
“You’re a rude thing!” grinned the general manager. “What’s your idea in going up against the P.-U.?”
“Partly personal,” confessed Jeremy. “That puffy Clark thing rasps my nerves. Anyway, I don’t like the P.-U. methods, public or private, and I’m not going to stand any bulldozing.”
“Going to fight?”
“If it comes to that.”
“Know what it’ll cost us?”
“No.”
“More than a thousand a year if they pull out all their regular advertising.”
“It’s tough, Andy. But I don’t know any other way to run a paper.”
“Oh, I’m not kickin’! It ain’t my money. I enjoy it. Maybe he won’t pull out, unless we go after him first.”
“I’m going after him, though, the next raw deal the P.-U. tries to put through.”
“Let’s pray they’ll be good, then,” said Galpin.
Upon receipt of the hand-perfected private secretary’s report, though it was carefully edited to avoid too unbearable offense, Mr. Clark waxed exceedingly wroth. His first intent was to order all future advertising in The Guardian stopped. Passion always had the first word with Montrose Clark, but shrewdness had the last. Shrewdness said, “Wait.” Montrose Clark could be a good waiter. He waited.
Jeremy Robson did n’t. He published on the following day an editorial, “Public Utilities and Public Rights,” stating unequivocally The Guardian’s attitude, which gave deep scandal to President Clark and inspired the darkest misgivings in the mind of the diplomatic Judge Dana. The lawyer hurried around to see his principal.
“What did you do or say to young Robson?” he demanded.
Outraged innocence sat blackly on the presidential brow. “Nothing,” he declared. “He—he sent me an insulting message. He refused to come and see me. I’ll smash him.”
“Very likely. Meantime he’s smashed our transfer scheme. Or he will smash it when the time comes.”
“I shall go ahead with it just the same.”
“You’ll be swamped. He’s dug up some tax assessment material on us that would n’t look pretty in print if he sprung it now. We’ll have to go slow.”
The President of the P.-U. swallowed his desire for immediate reprisals. He felt that his prey was sure in the long run. No newspaper could offend consistently the important people and interests of a community as The Guardian was doing, and continue to make a living. That way bankruptcy lay!
Personally, Montrose Clark declared against this young upstart a war of extermination. He would eliminate the noxious creature. He would make the town too hot for him.
Vast would have been his rage could he have known that, at the same time, the editor was meditating much the same design concerning himself. War to the finish, on both sides. And all, in the first instance, because of a minor affectation expressed in the pronunciation of the hybrid word “rippawtah.” Of such petty stuff are human complications constructed, and thereby the plans of the mighty brought to dust!