A STOP-PRESS MESSAGE
Mr. John McMurtrie, editor of the Toronto Sphere, a capable journalist and a man of many friends, strolled into his office about three o'clock one Wednesday afternoon. His first extra edition was due at four, and it may seem that he had allowed himself a very short time for dealing with fresh items of news that had come to hand since noon; but he had an excellent assistant, who took a real interest in his work, so that there was no need for the editor to hurry his luncheon or the ensuing cigar.
"Well, Daniels," he said genially, as he entered his assistant's room. He sat across a corner of the table, exhibiting a well-developed calf neatly covered with golfing hose. "Is there anything fresh and frothy on the tape?"
"Not much. A wire from 'Frisco about those flying men."
"You don't say so?"
"Here it is."
He handed the slip to his chief, who ran his eye over the message. The words employed were few, but a journalist of McMurtrie's experience instinctively covered the bare bones with a respectable integument, and clothed this with a quite picturesque raiment by force of the more ornamental parts of speech.
The substance of what he read was as follows: A cable message had reached San Francisco from Honolulu in the afternoon of the previous day, announcing that an aeroplane had alighted there about three o'clock that morning, the owner, a Lieutenant Thistleton (so it was corrupted) Smith declaring that he had come from Samoa in sixteen hours, and was proceeding to San Francisco. He had left three hours later, having waited only to take in a stock of petrol. On receipt of this message the editor of every newspaper in the city had arranged for a relay of reporters to be up all night and watch for the arrival of this extraordinary machine. Shortly after midnight the hum of the propellers was heard over Golden Gate, and a light in the sky indicating the course of the aeroplane, a dozen journalists, in motor-cars, rushed after it, but were hopelessly out-distanced. They discovered it on the outskirts of the city. The airmen had already landed. The reporter who was first in the race seized upon Lieutenant Smith, and learning that he had only alighted to obtain more petrol, rushed him back to the city in his car. His comrades and competitors, on arriving, sought to interview the second man, whose name they had not been able to ascertain; but he was very uncommunicative, being occupied in cleaning the engine. Lieutenant Smith was back with petrol in twenty minutes; in half-an-hour he was again on his way. This extreme haste caused great disappointment to the airmen and civic dignitaries of the city, they having risen from their beds on hearing of his arrival to honour Lieutenant Smith with a reception. When they reached the spot where he had descended, he had been gone some ten minutes. In the race to meet him, one of the motor-cars collided with an electric-light standard and was overturned, its occupant, Mr. Aeneas T. Muckleridge, being carried to hospital in a critical condition. Several San Francisco newspapers had published interviews with Lieutenant Smith, one of them ten columns long.
Mr. McMurtrie chuckled as he read this dispatch in the shorthand of the news agency.
"Bedad, 'tis worth a special editorial, Daniels. But why didn't we get it before, man? It ought to have been in time for the morning papers."
"You remember, sir, there's been something wrong with the line to-day through the storm."
"So there has, indeed. Well, take out that stuff about the new British tariff, and send Davis in to me."
He went into his room, sat back in his chair, pushed up his golfing cap, and smiled as he meditated the periods of his editorial. In a few moments a thin, ragged-headed youth entered with an air of haste and terror. He carried a paper-block, which he set on his knee, looking anxiously at the editor. Mr. McMurtrie began to dictate, the stenographer's pencil flying over the paper as he sought to overtake the rapid utterance of his chief. The article, as it appeared on the second page of the Sphere an hour later, ran as follows:
HOCUS POCUS
A hoax, or as our merry ancestors would have called it, a flam, is usually the most ephemeral and evanescent of human devices. Like a boy's soap bubble, it glitters for a brief moment in iridescent rotundity, then ceases to be even a film of air. It is unsubstantial as the tail of Halley's comet. On rare occasions, it is true, its existence is prolonged; many worthy people are beguiled; and some enthusiasts are so effectually hoodwinked as to persist in their delusion, and even to form societies for its propagation. But mankind at large is sufficiently sane to avoid a fall into this abyss of the absurd, and, having paid its tribute of laughter, goes its way without being a cent the worse.
San Francisco appears to be the latest victim of The Great Aviation Hoax, and we shall watch the progressive stages of its disillusionment with sympathetic interest, or the development of its newest cult with sincere commiseration. Like many other phenomena, good and bad, this gigantic flam, it will be remembered, took its rise in the east. Its genesis was reported in Constantinople nearly a week ago: then at intervals we learnt that these mysterious airmen, one of whom with artful artlessness had adopted the plain, respectable, and specious name of Smith, had manifested themselves at Karachi, Penang, and Port Darwin successively. The curtain then dropped, and the world waited with suspense for the opening of the next act, though there were some who suspected that the performers had slipped away with the cash-box during the interval, and would never be heard of again. However, the curtain has at last rung up at the golden city of the west, and it is certainly a mark of the ingenuity of the concocters of the hoax that they allowed at least twenty-four hours for the passage of the Pacific. In another column we give an account of a visit to San Francisco, in the small hours of this morning, from which it will be seen that the city fathers narrowly escaped making themselves ridiculous, the flying men having wisely disappeared before the municipal deputation, hastily summoned from their beds, had time to make the indispensable changes in their attire. It need scarcely be hinted that there are many accomplished aviators in San Francisco who would take a jovial pleasure in lending themselves to this amusing hoax, if only for the chance of seeing their most reverend seniors in pyjamas.
A glance at the itinerary of the alleged world tourists, coupled with a comparison of dates, will show how impossible it is for them to have covered the stages of their tour in the time claimed. Indeed, it is almost an insult to our readers' intelligence even to suggest this comparison. The record put up by Blakeney in his New York-Chicago flight was 102 miles per hour for six consecutive hours. If the flying men who are now asserted to have touched at San Francisco are the same as were reported by the Constantinople correspondent of the London Times on Friday last, a simple calculation will show that they must have flown for many days at a time at twice Blakeney's speed, with the briefest intervals for food and rest. It is not yet claimed that the alleged Smith and his anonymous companion have discovered a means of dispensing with sleep, or that they are content, like the fabulous chameleon, to live on air. Our children may live to witness such developments in the science of aviation as may render possible an aerial journey of this length and celerity; but so sudden an augmentation of the speed and endurance of the aeroplane, to say nothing of the more delicate mechanism of the human frame, demands a more authentic confirmation of the midnight impressions of the San Francisco journalists than has yet come to hand. In short, we do not believe a word of it, and our speculation at the moment is, what brand of soap or tinned meat, what new machine oil, or panacea for human ills, these ingeniously arranged manifestations are intended to boom.
"What do you think of that, Davis?" asked Mr. McMurtrie at the end of six minutes' rapid dictation. It was his pardonable weakness to claim the admiration of his subordinates.
"Bully, sir," replied the shorthand-writer timidly. As a matter of fact, he thought nothing at all, his whole attention having been so completely absorbed by his task of making dots and curves and dashes as to leave no portion of his brain available for receiving mental impressions. But the editor was satisfied. Telling the youth to transcribe his notes and send the flimsies page by page as completed to the printer, he took up his golf sticks, passed through the outer office, instructing his assistant to read the proof, and departed to his recreation.
There is an excellent golf course on the Scarborough Bluffs, the rugged, seamed, and fissured cliffs that form the northern shore of Lake Ontario, near Toronto. Boarding a trolley-car, Mr. McMurtrie soon reached the club-house, where he found his friend Harry Cleave already awaiting him.
"Hullo, Mac. Day's work done?" was Mr. Cleave's salutation.
"Indeed it is. The best day's work I have done for a good while."
"Then you are pitching into somebody or something, that's certain. What is it this time?"
"Bubbles, my boy. Those flying-men are after spinning again. Some of the 'Frisco men will have a pain within side of 'em when they read how I have touched 'em up. Now then, Cleave, we've got the course to ourselves. I'm sure I can give you half a stroke and a beating. 'Tis your honour."
The consciousness of having touched up the 'Frisco men seemed to have a salutary influence on Mr. McMurtrie's play. He was in the top of form, won the first two holes, and was in the act of lifting his club to drive off from the tee of number three, when a faint buzzing sound from the direction of the lake caused him to suspend the stroke and glance over the placid blue water. Far away in the sky he saw a dark speck about the size of a swallow, which, however, grew with extraordinary rapidity, and in a few moments declared itself to be an aeroplane containing two men.
"Be jabers!" quoth Mr. McMurtrie, resting his club on the ground and watching the flying machine with eyes in which might have been discerned a shade of misgiving.
It was, perhaps, thirty seconds from the time when he first caught sight of it that the aeroplane came perpendicularly above his head, the whirring ceased, and the machine descended with graceful swoop upon the well-cropt turf within fifty yards of the spot where the two golfers stood. As soon as it alighted, Mr. McMurtrie handed his sticks to the caddie, and, as one released from a spell, hurried to meet the man who had just stepped out of the car.
"That's Toronto over yonder?" said Smith without ceremony.
"Indeed it is," replied McMurtrie, taking stock of the dirty dishevelled figure. "Your name's not Smith?"
"Indeed it is!"
"Holy Moses!" ejaculated McMurtrie, and, to Smith's amazement, he turned his back and sprinted at the speed of a race-horse towards the club-house a few hundred yards away. He rushed to the telephone box, rang up his office, and, catching at his breath, waited with feverish eagerness for the answer to his call.
"You there, Daniels? I'm McMurtrie. For any sake stop press, cancel that leader, put back the tariff, votes for women, anything, only stop it.... What!... Edition off the machine!... Don't let a copy leave the office.... What!... First deliveries made!... Recall 'em, or the paper's ruined. Smith's here!... No, This-something Smith ... no, you ass, the naval lieutenant, he flying man: don't you understand!... understand!... are you there?... Get out a special edition at once.... Where's Davis? Bring him to the 'phone to take a note.... That you, Davis? Take this down.... 'As we go to press we have the best of evidence for the statement that the marvellous world-flight of that intrepid young airman, Lieutenant Thistledown Smith, of the British Navy, is a sober fact, and not, as our sceptical wiseacres have asserted, an ingeniously concocted hoax. Lieutenant Smith descended at 3:50 this afternoon on the Scarborough Bluffs, having accomplished the enormous distance from San Francisco without a stop, in the marvellous time of twelve hours, twenty-one minutes, and fourteen seconds. In our final edition, which will be accelerated, we shall publish an interview with Lieutenant Smith, with exclusive particulars of his remarkable voyage and his romantic career."
"I'm not so sure of that," said Smith dryly. He had entered with Mr. Cleave, and heard the frenzied editor's concluding sentences. "To begin with, I stopped at St. Paul, and was lucky enough to escape without attracting any attention. I shouldn't have been here but for the storm."
"For goodness' sake, Lieutenant, don't tell anybody that. A little stop at St. Paul isn't worth making a fuss about. You'll come along into the city with me, and we will get a few of the boys together and give you a topping dinner."
"I'd rather be hanged," said Smith. "The fact is, I only came down to get enough petrol on board to take me across the Atlantic. You can tell me where to get what I want?"
"Indeed I can. I tell you what. I'll 'phone for the petrol—how much do you want?—and get it out here in no time. You won't mind me ringing up a few particular friends, and inviting them out to see you?"
"Please don't do anything of the kind. I'm very tired; I'm not presentable; and I've no time to spare."
"Sure you wouldn't be after declining to answer a question or two—to be worked up into an interview, you know?"
"Really, I've nothing to tell. You appear to know a good deal about me already, and I'm sure your imagination can supply the rest."
"But there's a gap, lieutenant. We can't account for you between Port Darwin and Honolulu."
"We're wasting time," said Smith despairingly. "Be so good as to order up the petrol; then I'll give you a few headings."
McMurtrie was delighted. He gave the order to a firm in the city, requesting that the petrol should be sent out by motor at once. Then he took Smith and Cleave into the luncheon-room, which they had to themselves, ordered a meal for Smith, and drinks for Cleave and himself, and while Smith was eating, filled his note-book with jottings, which he foretold would sell out two editions of his paper like winking.
Rodier, meanwhile, was cleaning the engine.
To execute an order smartly is one of the first of business virtues. Smith was satisfied that the virtue was appreciated in Toronto: the petrol arrived, as McMurtrie assured him, in the shortest possible time. Unluckily the Toronto men of business had their share of humanity's common failing—if it is a failing—curiosity. McMurtrie, with Smith at his elbow, had scrupulously refrained from explaining what the petrol was wanted for; his assistant, Daniels, had been too busy seeing the special edition to press to run about gossiping; and Davis, the shorthand-writer, the third in the secret, had become so mechanical that nothing stirred emotion within him; he wrote of murders, assassinations, political convulsions, Rooseveltian exploits, diplomatic indiscretions, everything but football matches, with the same pencil and the same cold, inhuman precision. But it happened that one of the compositors in the Sphere printing office, who took a lively interest in the affairs of his fellow mortals, had a bet with a friend in the plumbing line about this very matter of the mysterious flying men. No sooner had he set up his portion of the editor's note than he begged leave of absence for half-an-hour from the overseer, whipped off his apron, and rushed off to demand his winnings before the loser had time to spend them in the Blue Lion on the way home from work. They repaired, nevertheless, to the Blue Lion to settle their account; they told the news to the barman, who passed it to the landlord; a publisher's clerk heard it, and repeated it to the manager; the manager acquainted the head of the firm as he went out to tea; the publisher mentioned it in an off-hand way to the man next him at the café; and—to roll the snowball no further—half Toronto was in possession of the news before the Sphere appeared on the streets.
The result was a general exodus in the direction of the Scarborough Bluffs. On foot, on bicycles, in cabs, motor-cars, trolley-cars, drays, and all kinds of vehicles, every one who had a tincture of sporting spirit set off to see two men and a structure of metal and canvas—quite ordinary persons and things, but representing a Deed and an Idea.
Thus it happened that close behind the dray conveying the petrol came a long procession, the sound of whose coming announced it from afar.
"'Tis the way of us in Toronto," said McMurtrie soothingly, when Smith vented his annoyance.
The crowd invaded the club-grounds, to the horror of the green-keepers, and rolled past the club-house to the aeroplane, where Rodier, having finished cleaning, was regaling himself with an excellent repast sent out to him by Mr. McMurtrie. Cheers for Lieutenant Smith arose; Rodier smiled and bowed, not ceasing to ply his knife and fork until a daring youth put his foot upon the aeroplane. Then Rodier dropped knife and fork, and rushed like a cat at the intruder. The Frenchiness of his language apprised the spectators that they were on the wrong scent, and they demanded to know where Lieutenant Smith was. Knowing Smith's dislike of demonstrations, Rodier was about to point lugubriously to the edge of the cliff, when some one shouted "Here he is!" and the mob flocked towards the club-house, from which Smith had just emerged. Rodier seized the opportunity to finish his meal, and direct the operations of the men who had brought the petrol.
Smith had not found himself in so large a crowd of English-speaking people since he had left London. The early morning enthusiasm of the San Francisco journalists was hard to bear, but the afternoon enthusiasm of Toronto was terrible. Hundreds of young fellows wanted to hoist him to their shoulders; dozens of opulent citizens perspired to carry him to the city in their cars; some very young ladies panted to kiss him; and a score of journalists buzzed about him, but upon them McMurtrie smiled with a look of conscious superiority. Smith whispered to him. The editor nodded.
"Gentlemen!" he shouted, holding up his hand.
"Silence!... Hear, hear!... S-s-sh!... Don't make such a row!... Same to you!... Let's hear what Jack McMurtrie has got to say."
Thus the babel was roared down.
"Ladies and gentlemen," said McMurtrie; "Mr. Smith—"
"Three cheers for Smith!" shouted some one; horns blurted; from the edge of the crowd the first notes of "For he's a jolly good fellow" were heard, and they sang it through twice, so that those who had missed the beginning should not be hurt in their feelings.
"Ladies and gentlemen," began McMurtrie again, when he could make his voice heard, "Mr. Smith, who is rather hoarse from constant exposure to the night air, asks me to thank you for the warmth of your reception. He has been good enough to give me full particulars of his wonderful journey, which you will find in the final edition of the Sphere. As I've no doubt at all that you are anxious to have the chance of seeing Mr. Smith performing the evolutions which up to this time have been witnessed by next to nobody but the stars and the flying fishes, he has consented, at my request, to give a demonstration, provided that you'll allow him a clear run, and don't be accessory to your own manslaughter."
This announcement was greeted with loud cheers. The crowd fell back, allowing Smith a free course to the aeroplane.
"Bedad," said McMurtrie; "I wouldn't wonder but they tear me to pieces before I get safe home. But I'll skip into a motor-car as soon as you are started. Now, is there anything I can do for you before you go?"
"Only send two cables for me; one to my sister: here's the address; say simply 'All well.' The other to Barracombe, 532 Mincing Lane, London, asking him to meet me at home at eleven p.m., to-morrow. You won't forget?"
"I will not. But you're a cool hand, to be sure."
A space was cleared; the aeroplane ran off, soared aloft, and for a few seconds circled over the heads [[See Illustration]]of the spectators. Then a voice came to them from the air, not so much like Longfellow's falling star as an emission from a gramaphone.
"Good-bye, friends. Thanks for your kind reception. Sorry I can't stay any longer; but I've got to be in Portsmouth, England within twenty-four hours. Good-bye."
The aeroplane wheeled eastward, and shot forward at a speed that made the onlookers gasp. When it had disappeared, they became suddenly alive to the suspicion that Jack McMurtrie had practised a ruse on them. They gave a yell and looked round for him. A motor-car was making at forty miles an hour for Toronto.