VI
He certainly did, as Mr. Worthington Oakes, the publisher of the Bee, will testify. In the front office on the editorial floor he saw Mr. Oakes for a bad half-hour, and demanded a public retraction of the insult.
At about the same time a dapper stranger who had come up in the elevator with Mr. Wilbram held speech with Assistant City-Editor Sloan in the local room at the other end of the hall.
"Yonder's your bird," said Mr. Sloan, pointing to a poetic-looking young man at a desk in a corner.
Crossing to the poet, who was absorbed in his day' poesy and talking to himself as he versified, the stranger smiled and spoke.
"Am I addressing the celebrated D.K.T.?"
"Am, cam, dam, damn, ham, jam, lamb——"
The far-away look of genius faded out of the poet's eyes.
"Not buying," said he. "My pay-envelope is mortgaged to you book-agents for ten years to come. Ma'am, ram, Sam, cram, clam, gram, slam——"
"Books are not my line," said the dapper one briskly. "I represent the Jones-Nonpareil Newspaper Syndicate. In fact, I am Jones. I have a proposition to make to you, Mr. D.K.T., that may enable you to buy more books than you can ever read. You know, of course, what the Jones-Nonpareil service is. We reach the leading dailies of the United States and Canada——"
"Have a chair, Mr. Jones."
"Thank you. We handle some very successful writers. Malcomb Hardy, you may have heard, takes his little five hundred a week out of us; and poor Larry Bonner pulled down eleven hundred as long as he had health. His Chinese-laundryman sketches might be selling yet."
"Suspense is cruel," spoke D.K.T. eagerly. "Let the glad news come."
"Some time ago," said the syndicate man, "you printed in your column an essay in imitation of a schoolboy's. You called it 'Moral Principles'."
D.K.T. sank back with a low moan.
"If you can write six of those a week for a year," continued the visitor, "you won't ever need to slave any more. You can burn your pen and devote the rest of your life to golf and good works."
The poet closed his eyes. "Sham, swam, diagram," he murmured.
"Does a minimum guarantee of fifteen thousand a year look like anything to you? There will, of course, be the book rights and the movie rights in addition."
"Anagram, epigram, telegram, flimflam—aha!" cried D.K.T. "Siam!" He wrote it down.
"That little skit of yours," pursued the caller, "has swept the country. You have created a nation-wide demand. My ringer is on the journalistic pulse, and I know. Can you repeat?"
He drew a paper from his pocketbook.
"Here is a list of subjects your imaginary Willie Downey might start with: The Monetary System; the Cost of Living; the League of Nations; Capital and Labour——"
Over the stranger's head an office-boy whispered significantly: "Front office."
"Excuse me," said the poet, and hurried away.
With the publisher, in the front office, sat A. Lincoln Wilbram, quite purple in the cheeks. They had a file of the Bee before them.
"Diedrick," said Mr. Oakes, "on March eighteenth you printed this thing"—his finger on Willie's essay—"why did you do it?"
"What's the matter with it?" replied D.K.T.
"The matter with it," spoke Mr. Wilbram terribly, "is that it slanders my wife. It makes her out to eat dog bones. Friends of ours as far away as California have seen it and recognized her portrait, drawn by your scurrilous pen. The worst of it is, the slander is founded on fact. By what right do you air my domestic affairs before the public in this outrageous fashion?"
With agonized eyes the funny-man read the essay as far as the fateful line, "It was Mrs. Will Brum."
"My gosh!" he cried.
"How did you come to write such a thing?" Mr. Oakes demanded.
"Me write that thing? If I only had!"
The facts were recalled; the sending of Mr. Sloan and many reporters to Rutland; the need of extra hands at the copy-table that day.
"I found this contribution on my desk. It looked safe. In the rush of the morning I sent it up and never gave it another thought."
"So it is really a boy's essay, and not some of your own fooling?" asked Oakes.
"A boy's essay, yes; entered in Mr. Wilbram's prize contest, eliminated by the boy's teacher and shown by her to Mr. Sloan, who brought it to the shop. I know now that Sloan meant me to change the author's name to save the kid from ridicule. If there were actual persons in it, I'm as amazed as Mrs. Wilbram."
"I wonder, Oakes," said Wilbram, "that a dignified newspaper like yours would print such trash, in the first place."
Worthington Oakes looked down his nose. D.K.T. took up the challenge.
"Trash, sir? If it's trash, why has the Ashland Telephone asked permission to reprint it on the front cover of their next directory?"
"Have they asked that?"
"They have; they say they will put a little moral principle into the telephone hogs in this town. And didn't a Fifth Avenue minister preach a sermon on it last Sunday? Doesn't the Literary Review give it half a page this week? Hasn't it been scissored by almost every exchange editor in the land? Isn't there a man in the city-room now offering me fifteen thousand a year to write a daily screed like it?"
"You can see, Wilbram," said Mr. Oakes, "that there was no intention to injure or annoy. We are very sorry; but how can we print an apology to Mrs. Wilbram without making the matter worse?"
"Who is this Willie Downey?" demanded Wilbram. "And who is the school teacher?"
"I don't believe my moral principles will let me tell you," replied D.K.T. "I'm positive Mr. Sloan's won't let him. We received the essay in confidence."
"Enough said," Mr. Wilbram exclaimed, rising. "Good day to you. I don't need your help, anyway. I'll find out from the butcher."