VII
In a newspaper office, where one impression so quickly and inevitably obliterates another, sensation is startling only in the fact of its ephemerality. For two busy hours wave after wave of the world's turbulence had beaten on the shoreline of the Advance staff's attention. Every one knew, from Pyott down, that the day was a "big" one. And since it is seldom the ever-arriving guests of sensation which disturb a newspaper office but rather the secondary thought of bestowing them in their right chamber and bed and fitting them with their right "heading" night-caps, the ordeal of the Advance's day had reached its second and most exacting crisis. So when Pyott, the managing editor, was called up on the wire by Obed Tyrer, the President of the First National Trust, the call from that quarter carried with it no responsive curiosity.
"Can you come up here right away?" demanded the banker, in a voice of that coerced tranquillity into which the trained mind translates itself when face to face with undue excitement.
"No; I can't! "
"Why can't you?"
"Well, among other things, I've got the trifling matter of a paper to put to press. What's wrong?"
"You know what's wrong!"
"Do I?"
"And you and your men let this go through, two whole weeks of it, for the sake of your little yellow-journal scarehead!"
"Look here, Tyrer, I'm a busy man. Tell me what you're talking about, or ring off."
"I'm talking about the lunacy of a one-cent journalist who's willing to risk even his own funds for the sake of an afternoon beat! I tell you, Pyott, the whole story's got to be stopped!"
"What story?"
"The Advance story! I've got your man Trotter here now. He——"
"Ah, Trotter!" exclaimed Pyott. He was at last beginning to see light.
"I've got him and your job-room man named Tiernan up here, but I can't do anything with Trotter. He's mad, mad as a March hare. Says he's got to get his story down to you for to-day's issue."
"So you've got Trotter there! What else have you got?"
"Will you hold things up till I run down and talk it over? Will you promise me that much?"
Pyott laughed. "Then young Trotter got his story, after all?"
"Got his story? Of course he got it. And in another four hours that safe-cracker would have drilled right into our vitals. I tell you we can't imperil our institution this way. We can't let that stuff get out. We can't do it!"
"Nobody's going to break your nice new bank, Obed! You run down here in a taxi and we'll try to straighten things out."
"But what'll I do with Trotter? How're we ever going to hold him in?"
"Where's your safe-cracker man?"
"We've got him right here! Burns is sending over an A. B. P. A. man to take care of him."
"D'you mean he's hurt?"
"No, no! We've identified him as Missouri Horton of the Scott
Gang—he got a Sing Sing life sentence for yegg work in Yonkers.
But Burns tells me he had enough money buried away to buy Tammany
influence and get paroled. Can't you see what that means?"
"Which way? To your office or to mine?"
"To us! They've got him now, for life! They can get him back to
Sing Sing and keep the whole cursed thing under cover!"
There was a moment's silence before the cogitating Pyott spoke again. "And you say you've got Trotter right there with you?"
"Yes, but he's acting like a madman, in the Vice-President's private room."
Again there was a moment's silence. "Then give him ink and paper—give him lots of it. Tell him I've said for him to write the story THERE. Tell him to sling himself, that I want every detail, every fact, and ten solid columns of it!"
"What are you driving at?"
"I'm driving at this: keep him busy, man! Don't you see? Keep him writing there until the thing's worked out of his system. Then I'll tame him down, later. Meanwhile, you'd better clean house up there so you can officially contradict the whole story if the yellows happen to get after you."
"But nothing can get out, I tell you, unless you PUT it out!"
"Then what are you worrying about?"
"Young Trotter says he's got to send his stuff in. He's not satisfied with the mere idea of writing it."
"Then give him one of your men, two of your men, for carriers. Tell him to keep sending his copy down in relays, as he writes it. But don't let him get away."
"Oh, I'll hold him here if I have to nail him to the floor. I tell you, a thing like this would shake public confidence. It'd be worse than a fireproof hotel going up in flames. It would mean an alarming and immediate depreciation in our credit, a deplorable——"
"Of course it would. Come down as soon as you can and tell me all that. I'll have more time then."
Pyott hung up the receiver. He poised for one brief and immobile moment, deep in thought, before he swung about to the three exigent figures making signs for his attention. Then the thin-featured, many-wrinkled, weary-eyed face relaxed in an almost honest and unequivocal smile.