CHAPTER VTHE CUB REPORTER
Fortune and Boss Russell favored Jeff Thatcher. When he appeared at half past ten that night in theFreemanoffice the city editor was in a quandary over the illness of two members of his staff and the resignation of a third, and when he peered over his glasses at Jeff Thatcher as he stood in front of his desk, he realized that here was part of the solution to the unpleasant situation of finding himself short-handed.
“You are young,” he told Jeff, “but your school stuff has been mighty good for a beginner, and I’ll take you on as a cub, if you want to take Mulvaney’s place. I’ve moved Mull up as special assignment man and you can run his obits and cover the hospitals for accident cases.” And so Jeff became a member of theFreemanstaff with surprising quickness. Indeed, he started out forthwith to make what was to be his nightly rounds of undertaking establishments and hospitalseven at that late hour, and at first he took a keen delight in the work.
There was no such thing as an assignment book in the office of the New CityDaily Freeman. That method was far too slow for city editor, Boss Russell. He preferred to give out assignments over the city desk just as fast as they developed. He would hand them over with a few penciled notes, or a newspaper clipping or so, and some terse, snappy instructions that usually were enough to inspire any one of his staff of reporters to write the best story of his career. If he did not he stood a good chance of being fired. Boss Russell wanted the best that was in a man all the time. And he usually got it.
Jeff Thatcher watched this nightly distribution of assignments for two weeks. He watched it at first eagerly, hopefully speculating on what his would be. But as nights went on he watched it none the less eagerly, but far from hopeful. He soon grew to know what his assignments would be. Boss Russell had a method all his own of breaking in cub reporters. Jeff began to realize that it was a method that treated said cub as if he were a machine. He had already begun to feellike the cogs in a watch or the gears in an automobile. Life became a constant succession of visits to certain undertaking establishments for obituaries of the people who had died that day, a nightly trip to police headquarters to copy the unimportant police slips of accidents, a visit to the Memorial Hospital, after which he would return to theFreemanoffice, there to sit down in front of a typewriter and laboriously grind out paragraph after paragraph of names, dates and ages of people who had been injured and who had died during the past twenty-four hours. Jeff began to feel like a dead one himself.
Night after night he watched the line of reporters file by Boss Russell’s desk to get their assignment and fare forth on some interesting news quest, but always when he, usually last, arrived at the desk, the city editor would wearily pass over to him a cryptic note “undertakers, headquarters, Memorial Hospital, Jones wedding,” or perhaps the last would be varied with such notations as “see Dr. Bisbee on Brinkerhoff accident,” or “Look in at Æolian Hall, Plumber’s Association dance.” It was always the same. Jeff had come to the conclusion that he neverwould get a real news story to write. He wondered why cleaning streets or delivering milk would not be just as interesting and perhaps a lot more remunerative.
The night of March 15 was no different than all the rest. As on a succession of nights previous, he got the same terse notation. With very little enthusiasm he ran his eyes over the slip of paper. “Undertakers, Memorial Hospital and drop in at Erie Railroad Yards and find Tim Crowley. He had a three-legged calf born on his farm yesterday.” Jeff looked at the last notation twice and smiled grimly.
“Three-legged calf. Huh, it’s a little different than a hod carrier’s dance, but I won’t set the town on fire with the story I might write about that,” and, with a grunt of dissatisfaction, Jeff buttoned up his overcoat and turned up his collar and fared forth into a near zero night, and started on his monotonous rounds of undertaking establishments, meanwhile wondering vaguely what the fellows were doing over in Pennington, and wishing mightily that he might be sent out on a story across the river to Montvale, where the old school was located.
Goodness knows the town was full of good news stories; why couldn’t Boss Russell trust him with one of them. There was the prolonged street car strike in Montvale. Why couldn’t he get an assignment to go over there and write a story of one of their frequent riots. Then he would have a chance to look in at Pennington, anyhow, and tell some of the fellows what he was doing. Why couldn’t he get sent out on a good fire story such as the warehouse fire on the east side two nights ago. That would have been a story worth writing. Spectacular stuff about bursting gasoline barrels, heroic firemen and all that. There was a murder mystery in town, too. That Italian banker who had been found dead in his own doorway with the Mafia death sign on his forehead. Why didn’t Boss Russell turn him loose on that story, and see if he had ingenuity enough to find Joe Gattiano, the suspected murderer who had mysteriously disappeared from town. Other reporters had tried and failed and the story was old now. Why not let him try his hand? Goodness knows he couldn’t spoil the story or fare any worse than the otherFreemanreporters had. Even the moth-eaten and written out Third National Bank theft wouldbe a relief. Perhaps he could find some clew of the absconding paying teller, Roderick Hammond, who nearly a month ago had disappeared from the bank at the same time that a hundred thousand dollars worth of Liberty Bonds were discovered to be missing. Nothing had been heard of Hammond or the bonds since, and now after columns of speculative stories had been printed the case was dropped and forgotten. Jeff wished that Boss Russell would give him a chance to revive even that case again. But no, it was “undertakers, Memorial Hospital and—and—plumbers’ dances, or three-legged calves or—or—beans.” Jeff snorted the last in disgust as he turned into the first mortuary chapel on his list.
Jeff Thatcher was a cub reporter. But he was not the cubbiest cub reporter that had ever tried to break in on theFreeman. He was a born newspaper man. He loved the work. Ever since he had shed knee trousers he had been enthusiastic about journalism, and about the next best thing to finishing out his course at Pennington, in Jeff’s estimation, was serving as a reporter under Boss Russell. TheFreemanwas a morning paper. It came onto the news stands and streetcorners in the dark hours before dawn so that newsboys could deliver it in time to have it read over breakfast tables or in the street cars while New City’s business men were on their way to office, store or shop. And to get a newspaper out at that time of day meant that reporters, typesetters and pressmen must work all night. Jeff came into the editorial rooms at six o’clock at night just when other young business men were going home to their evening meal and rest. And Jeff, with others of the staff, worked on through the night until two or three o’clock in the morning gathering news of the day’s happenings and writing stories that were read by Boss Russell and his trained copy readers and sent upstairs to the composing room to be set in type to be printed in the morning editions.
It was a hard life, for Jeff had to reverse his whole method of living, working nights and tumbling into bed at four or five o’clock in the morning to sleep until noontime or later. But if it was hard it was also fascinating and Jeff realized that it could be made more fascinating if he could only get a chance to work on some of the really big news stories of the day instead of plugging along writingobituaries and paragraphs of but little consequence.
Grumbling inwardly and feeling more or less discouraged, Jeff left the Memorial Hospital, where he had looked over the book of the day’s arrival and departure of patients, and talked with the intern. He turned in the direction of the big Erie Railroad yards located west of the city, where he hoped to find Tim Crowley, and learn the details of this bovine prodigy that had been born out on Tim’s little farm a mile or so from New City.
The railroad’s yards covered several acres of ground and included a big station, a dispatcher’s office, roundhouse, freight yard, and machine shop, and myriads of switch towers, semaphores and block signals, the red and green lights of which blinked and winked at him in the cold winter night as Jeff picked his way across the network of tracks to the building in which the dispatcher’s office was located. It was mighty cold and growing colder. Wind whipped the steam and smoke from the roundhouse gustily across the yard, icicles of huge proportions hung from the dripping spouts of the crane-like nozzles of thewater tanks, and the few switch engines that sputtered about the yards, shunting cars here and there,—coughed hoarsely as if the cold had somehow gotten into their iron chests and made them a bit asthmatic.
Jeff pushed open the door of the dispatcher’s office, to be greeted with a rattling fusillade from a score of clicking telegraph instruments that were spattering the air full of, to Jeff, unintelligible dots and dashes. It was warm and cheerful in there and he made for a bulky steam radiator that was hissing comfortably, as he pulled off his gloves and breathed on the tips of his fingers.
Tom Kelly, the big, good-natured chief dispatcher, in shirt sleeves and vest, got up from his desk and came over to greet him.
“Hello, Jeff. Ain’t seen you in a week. What gust of wind blew you over in this direction?” said Kelly.
“Came over to see Tim Crowley. Where is he and what is there to the story about his—”
“Oh, that three-legged calf. Funny blamed thing, isn’t it? But it’s facts. Some of the fellows saw it. Tim’s the wrecking boss. You’ll find him on the wrecking train over on track sixteen.It’s warm and cheerful over there and the whole wrecking crew are probably playing cards in the ‘hack.’ If you get over you might be just in time to have a midnight snack with them. They eat about this time,” said Kelly, looking at his watch.
“Thanks. So long. See you again some time,” said Jeff, buttoning up his coat once more and going out into the night.