THE MARCHER.
She picked up the drawing, still wet, opened the door, and with a smile at the bewildered Ella, was gone.
It was after eight o'clock when she reached the Star building. She asked for Lasker's office, and sent in her card. Heyl had told her that Lasker was always at his desk at eight. Now, Fanny Brandeis knew that the average young woman, standing outside the office of a man like Lasker, unknown and at the mercy of office boy or secretary, continues to stand outside until she leaves in discouragement. But Fanny knew, too, that she was not an average young woman. She had, on the surface, an air of authority and distinction. She had that quiet assurance of one accustomed to deference. She had youth, and beauty, and charm. She had a hat and suit bought in Paris, France; and a secretary is only human.
Carl Lasker's private office was the bare, bright, newspaper-strewn room of a man who is not only a newspaper proprietor, but a newspaper man. There's a difference. Carl Lasker had sold papers on the street when he was ten. He had slept on burlap sacks, paper stuffed, in the basement of a newspaper office. Ink flowed with the blood in his veins. He could operate a press. He could manipulate a linotype machine (that almost humanly intelligent piece of mechanism). He could make up a paper single handed, and had done it. He knew the newspaper game, did Carl Lasker, from the composing room to the street, and he was a very great man in his line. And so he was easy to reach, and simple to talk to, as are all great men.
A stocky man, decidedly handsome, surprisingly young, well dressed, smooth shaven, direct.
Fanny entered. Lasker laid down her card. “Brandeis. That's a good name.” He extended his hand. He wore evening clothes, with a white flower in his buttonhole. He must have just come from a dinner, or he was to attend a late affair, somewhere. Perhaps Fanny, taken aback, unconsciously showed her surprise, because Lasker grinned, as he waved her to a chair. His quick mind had interpreted her thought.
“Sit down, Miss Brandeis. You think I'm gotten up like the newspaper man in a Richard Harding Davis short story, don't you? What can I do for you?”
Fanny wasted no words. “I saw the parade this afternoon. I did a picture. I think it's good. If you think so too, I wish you'd use it.”
She laid it, face up, on Lasker's desk. Lasker picked it up in his two hands, held it off, and scrutinized it. All the drama in the world is concentrated in the confines of a newspaper office every day in the year, and so you hear very few dramatic exclamations in such a place. Men like Lasker do not show emotion when impressed. It is too wearing on the mechanism. Besides, they are trained to self-control. So Lasker said, now:
“Yes, I think it's pretty good, too.” Then, raising his voice to a sudden bellow, “Boy!” He handed the drawing to a boy, gave a few brief orders, and turned back to Fanny. “To-morrow morning every other paper in New York will have pictures showing Mildred Inness, the beauty, on her snow-white charger, or Sophronisba A. Bannister, A.B., Ph.D., in her cap and gown, or Mrs. William Van der Welt as Liberty. We'll have that little rat with the banner, and it'll get 'em. They'll talk about it.” His eyes narrowed a little. “Do you always get that angle?”