XIII
BUT when he had slept on it, he was not quite so sanguine, for though he recognized that he had overcome the active opposition of his crew, of his lieutenant, and now of the acting-chief, he understood that such victories could be but temporary. He was standing against the interests of these men; and by whatever emotions of fear and respect he had held them back, the emotion would pass and the interest remain. He conceded to himself that Moore was negligible, that the men were almost so. (If he exercised even ordinary care, he could protect himself from whatever small malice there might be among them.) But if Moran and the Commissionerspared him, it would be with the hope of winning from his gratitude what they had not been able to force from his fear—namely, a disposition to aid the progress of the benevolent association of the “Jiggers” by favoring their members in his crew. And he was determined to do no such thing.
He turned to the newspaper account of the night’s fire—with the fireman’s usual excuse to himself that he wished to see how the reporter had “botched it”—and he read with sarcastic relish a detailed account of how Moran had used a “water-screen” to save the gas tanks, and had so headed off a “conflagration” that at one time threatened to wipe out half the East Side. He did not remember that by shouting “Chief’s orders!” he had himself given Moran the credit of that move. He acceptedthe report as another of those newspaper inaccuracies which are a tradition among firemen. He flung the paper aside and went out to start the men at work restoring theHudson’sblistered paint.
It is the rule of the department, of course, that no fireman shall talk “for publication;” and the unfortunate “newspaper tout” who reports a fire has to depend to an impossible extent upon his own eye. It is only after he has made personal friends of men or officers that he gets any “inside story” of what has happened, and then only on condition that he is careful to conceal the name of his informant. And it is not merely the “authorities” who enforce this rule; the men themselves uphold it; and the fireman who allows himself to be interviewed suffers thesame sort of treatment from his fellows that a schoolboy gets from his class when he “tattles” to his teacher. The men carry in their inside pockets, secretly, newspaper clippings in which they have been mentioned honorably, but they only show these—ostensibly at least—to complain that their names have been misspelled. Such is the modesty of nature!
Now the “newspaper tout” whom Farley had mentioned on the way back from the fruit wharf fire, had a shrewd suspicion of what was going on, under the surface of affairs, among the crew of theHudson. His attempts to “pump” the men, after the burning of theSachsen, had failed for the obvious reason that the secret to be concealed was a dangerous one. But, after the fire in the lumber yard, he caught afriendly fireman off duty, full of an enthusiastic admiration for Keighley’s work on the gas tanks, and he succeeded in finding out enough to show him that he was on the trail of a “good story” if he could only hunt it down.
After some preliminary scouting and scenting about, he came boldly to Keighley himself. “Captain,” he said—for the captain knew him by sight—“where did you learn that trick of making a water screen with three streams of a tower?”
The captain settled down in his swivel chair and replied, “I’m runnin’ a fire-boat. What’re yuh talkin’ about water towers?”
The reporter nodded. “I know. I was at that lumber yard blaze. I saw you do that trick with the water screen.”
Keighley said, “Say, young fellah, why don’t yuh read the papers?”
“Oh, I know all about that,” the newspaper man replied. “That’s the way the papers had it. But I saw what happened.”
Keighley rose. “Yuh did, eh? Then what the hell’re yuh botherin’meabout it fer? I got enough to do t’ atten’ to my own bus’ness without pokin’ any nose into newspaper muddles.Youatten’ to yer toutin’ an’ I’ll atten’ to my fires.”
“All right, captain,” the reporter called after him as he went out. “I’ll get that story yet.”
(And he got it, too.Thisis it!)