CHAPTER XVII
With a disgusted grunt, McNew, editor and proprietor of the New York Gazette, flung himself back in his chair. He was impatient by nature, and since he had bought the Gazette and made it the most notorious if not the most famous paper in New York, he had stopped concealing the fact. It is a bad thing for some men to succeed too soon in life. If McNew could have put off his success for twenty years, it would probably not have done him half the harm it did when he was thirty-five.
McNew had succeeded, so he had no patience with failure, not even with the temporary failure that comes to all newspaper men at times. His idea was that all information naturally belonged to the Gazette. Sometimes it was wilfully kept from it by perverse persons, and anon it was maliciously stolen from it by rivals; in either case he held that the loss was due to the failure of the Gazette men. McNew never admitted the impossibility of getting a piece of news.
In the present case he took no pains to hide his disgust.
“So far as I can make out, Risdon,” he jeered. “Your trouble seems to lie in the depraved desire of certain people to keep their business to themselves instead of telling it to you. What I want to know is, why do you let them do it? What in hell’s bells do you think the Gazette brought you back from Germany and landed you in Washington for? What do you think it pays you for? To report pink teas?”
Risdon flushed, but not from embarrassment. Risdon had been a newspaper writer too long to be readily embarrassed, even by his employer. But he was very angry. He leaned forward and brought his fist down with a bang on the table. “See here, Mac,” he began, furiously. “If—”
McNew drew in his horns a little. He wanted to stir up Risdon, but he did not want to stir him too far. “Aw! don’t call me Mac,” he interrupted. “It’s too infernally formal. Call me Johnny.”
A reluctant smile curved the corners of Risdon’s mouth. He and McNew had known each other ever since they had been cub reporters on the Alta California twenty years ago, and they understoodeach other thoroughly. “All right, Johnny,” he answered, still a little huffily. “If you want my resignation, you can get it.”
“What would I do with it?” retorted the other. “I can get a better scoop without turning around. I don’t want resignations; I want news. I’m publishing a newspaper, and I want something to fill it. Particularly, I want to know what the German and Japanese ambassadors are discussing so often and so earnestly with the daughter of the governor of the most Germanic state of all the states of Brazil. I don’t want pipe dreams; I want facts, f-a-c-t-s, facts, and not a lot of rot like this;” McNew crumpled a dozen typewritten pages in his hand, and flung them contemptuously on the table. “You call yourself a newspaper man and can’t find out a little thing like that?” he finished scornfully.
“Little thing! Humph! It is all right to talk, and it’s easy enough to invent plots a la Oppenheim, but—”
“Why don’t you invent ’em, then,” retorted the editor; “instead of sending in rehash like this. How many times have the Japs seized the Philippines—in the newspapers? How many times has Germany made faces at us since Admiral Diedrichtried to bluff Dewey at Manila eight years ago? Pah! It’s gotten to be a joke and a mighty bad joke, too; and it isn’t helped out much by the row over the schools in San Francisco. Japan isn’t going to war, and if she was going to war she wouldn’t give us warning that she was getting her back up. She’d jump right in, and fuss about it later. A yarn like this is altogether too fakey!”
Risdon studied the other for a moment. “You don’t see any significance in the Germany and Japan ambassadors meeting with a Brazilian countess, then, don’t you?” he asked.
“Mighty little. Where’s the connection? What’s Germany stand to win? As for Brazil—Well! the founding of a German empire in Brazil—if that’s what you’ve got in mind—is about as mouldy as the Japanese attack on the Philippines. This panatella countess is half a German, and it’s entirely natural that she should run with the German crowd here. As for the Japs—Well! that may be only a coincidence. Anyway! there’s no proof that would warrant me in risking half a dozen great big libel suits. No! No! Risdon! If you want to run a yarn like this you’ve got to have some real facts to back it up. Why don’t you get them?”
Risdon flung up his hands. “How can I?” he demanded. “I’ve done my best. You know what these embassies are. No one can break into them except a burglar—”
“Then turn burglar!”
“Not even a burglar, I should have said. No subordinate will talk; and I can fancy what Bildstein or Siuki would say if I went to either of them and asked to be told the subjects of their conferences with the Countess Elsa.”
“Well! What would they say?”
“Say? They’d say: ‘Such a question, sir, is an unwarranted impertinence. You will kindly excuse me.’ Then they would show me to the door and would cut me dead the next time they met me! Thank you! I’ve got to get news in Washington, and I’m not quarreling with my sources of information—especially when I know it wouldn’t do any good.”
“Well! How about this countess woman? You ought to be used to the aristocracy by now. Can’t you break in there, or shall I go back to New York and send an office boy down to show you how?”
Risdon bristled up. “See here, Mac,” he exclaimed. “You’ve said about enough. I’m tired of it, and if you keep on I’m likely to chuck youand my job into the street together. I’ve tried to do exactly what you suggest. The countess had been here some time before I knew it. When I heard of her, I suspected something was up; I had met the lady in Berlin and had reason to believe she was framing up something. She’s staying at Senator Pratt’s, and the darkey who runs my errands is sweet on one of the maids there. He told me of her interviews with the German ambassador. Then I saw Pratt and everybody else—Great Scott! Don’t you suppose I know my business! Nothing doing! I couldn’t get a line. So I went to see the countess. Nothing doing again. I knew there wouldn’t be. That woman can give me cards and spades and beat me. She’s wasted in Washington and in this age. She ought to have lived in France a hundred years ago. She’s a woman to overturn a government—or create one. And I am not so sure she isn’t doing one or both. But I can’t prove it.”
“How does she come to be visiting Pratt?”
“Put-up job! That’s one thing that makes me think there’s something big brewing. Pratt and his daughter were in Europe last summer just after—well, just after something peculiar happened—and the countess laid herself out for them. TheOuro Pretos aren’t any cheap adventurers, you understand. They’re all to the mustard in Paris and Berlin, and they made things mighty delightful for Susy Pratt. Now Susy’s all right. She’s a mighty sweet girl and the senator is—well—he’s chairman of the big foreign affairs committee of the Senate, but otherwise he’s what you’d expect a senator from his state to be. Fine people, both of them, but not the sort that the countess would lay herself out for without a lot better reason than their sterling characters. The colored gentleman in the wood-pile didn’t appear till this winter when the countess cabled from Tokio—Tokio, mind you—asking for an invitation to Washington for the winter. Of course, she got it, and I’d give something to know what she wanted it for. If it’s some big political scheme, as I think it is, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee is a mighty good stalking horse to do business behind. I believe she deliberately picked Pratt as a standing guarantee of her innocence and as an unsuspicious somebody whom she could wrap around her finger. Maybe she’s right about Pratt’s subserviency, but I’m none too sure of it.”
McNew considered. Then he slowly gathered up the typed pages that he had thrown on the table.“Then you really believe there’s something in this yarn of yours?” he asked.
Risdon did not answer at once. Instead, he stared out of the window along the broad stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue to where half a dozen electric lights branched beneath a pillared portico. So long he stared that McNew’s impatience burst out.
“Well! Well! Well!” he shouted. “Why don’t you speak?”
Risdon roused himself. “Yes,” he said, slowly. “I think it is correct—if not accurate. Of course, it isn’t new. It’s been used before. In fact, we’ve been yelling wolf a whole lot and nobody has ever taken it seriously, but the wolf did come at last in the fable, you’ll remember, and so may the Japs. I didn’t send that yarn just to make a story. I sent it because I really believed that the wolf might be about ready to come and I hoped to scare him off.”
McNew laughed. “Lord! you’re innocent,” he jeered. “Do you really think a scare-head in the Gazette would make the Japs—or Germans either—change their plans—if they have any. Your story would simply warn them. If you’re right—if you’re the least little bit right, you’ve got yourfinger onthestory of the year. And you go off half cocked. Heavens! Risdon! If I didn’t know to the contrary I’d think you a rank cub.”
“Tha-a-anks! But suppose war comes—while I wait. Do you want that?”
“War!” McNew shuddered. “God forbid! The Spanish War wiped out the Gazette’s entire profits for 1898, and a war with Germany would ruin it.”
Risdon nodded. “So I understand,” he answered. “I wrote that article, if you’ll notice, so as to convey the idea that I got my information from the State Department and that it was prepared for anything. In other words I tried to make it appear that the United States had chosen me to serve formal notice on the Japs to go slow. But I didn’t get my information from the State Department. I got the basis of it in Berlin last summer, and I’ve got more later from various sources. There is really something big on. I was sure of it months ago. That’s why I persuaded you to send Miss Byrd to South America. It wasn’t for commercial reasons, as I let on—though she’s made good on those all right. It was because I was sure there was something doing. But—well, I’ve gotten frightened. You’ve read thisstory”—he pointed to the typed sheets—“and you know what it says. That rebellion in South Brazil is growing stronger day by day. The rebels are getting men and money and arms from unknown sources. Rutile—he’s secretary of our embassy in Berlin—thought they were sent from Germany and got a leave of absence and set off to investigate them. He’s disappeared and I can’t learn what’s become of him. It looks to me as if the game was getting near a finish. I don’t know what the State Department knows or thinks; and I’ve been afraid to ask questions for fear I’d give the scoop away. So it seemed best to print the yarn. If it does nothing else, it may at least stir up the State Department. A yarn like that is more effective when it’s published—even if it’s published in a yellow sheet like the Gazette. Somehow people put more credence in it. Besides, I think it’s not a bad story.”
McNew snorted. “Oh! it’s good enough, in one way,” he admitted. “I’ve been joshing you to a certain extent. If I had been sure the story was a plain fake, I would have printed it this morning. But I wasn’t sure! I have information from—well, from abroad—that makes me think that maybe you’re right. That’s why I held it up lastnight. That’s why I came down here today. And that’s why you’re going to come with me and meet the young woman who I hope will help to solve the problem.” He drew out his watch and glanced at it. “It’s eight o’clock,” he noted; “and I wired her that we would call at eight thirty. So get your hat and come along.”