5
The story had to be written. Not at the rooms, though; Mildred might be there with Humphrey. Sometimes he worked at the Y.M.C.A.
But there was a light in the windows of the Gleaner office, over Hemple's.
McGibbon was up there, bent over his desk in his shirtsleeves, a hand sprawling through his straight ragged hair.
Henry acknowledged his partner's greeting with a grunt; dropped down at his own desk; plunged at the story.
McGibbon looked up once or twice, saw that Henry was unaware of him; continued his own work. His thin face looked worn. He bit his lip a good deal.
'There,' said Henry, finally, with a grim look—'there's the reception story.'
'Oh, all right.' McGibbon came over; took the pencilled script; then sat on the edge of the table beside Henry's desk.
'Haven't got some good filler stuff?' he queried wearily, brushing a hand across his forehead. 'We're going to have a lot of extra space this week.'
He watched Henry, to see if this remark had an effect. It had none. He nibbed his hand slowly back and forth across his forehead.
'The fact is,' he remarked, 'they've landed on us. Pretty hard. The advertisers. Just about all Simpson Street. It's a sort of boycott, apparently. Takes out two-thirds of our advertising. And Weston called my note—that two hundred and forty-eight—for paper. Simply charged it up against our account. Pretty dam' high-handed, I call it!'
His voice was rising. He sprang up, paced the floor.
'They're showing fight,' he ran on. 'We've got to lick 'em. That's my way—start at the drop of the hat. What's a little advertising! Get readers—that's the real trick of it. We'll lick 'em with circulation, that's what we'll do!'
He stood over Henry's desk; even pounded it. The boy didn't seem to get it, even now. He was hardly listening. With his own money at stake. But McGibbon was finding him like that; queer gaps on the practical side. No money sense whatever!
'Henry,' he was crying now, 'it's up to you. You're a genius. It's sheer waste to use you on fool receptions. Write, man! WRITE! Let yourself go. Anything—sketches, verse, stories! Let's give 'em what they don't look for in a country paper. Like the old Burlington Hawkeye and that fellow Brann. And the paper in Lahore that nobody would ever have heard of if Kipling hadn't written prose and verse to fill in, here and there. He was a kid, too. There's always, somewhere, a little paper that's famous because a man can write. Why shouldn't it be us! Us! Right up here over the meat-market. Why, we can make the little old Gleaner known from coast to coast. We can put Sunbury on the map. Just with your pen, my boy! With your pen! And then where'll old Weston be! Where'll these little two-bit advertisers be!'
He spread his thin hands in a gesture of triumph. Henry looked up now; slowly pushed back his chair; said, in a weak voice, 'I'm tired. Guess I'd better get along;' and walked out.
McGibbon stared after him, his mouth literally open.