Mr. E. H. Merriwether never before realized that the law against homicide was even more absurd than an Interstate Commerce Commission order; but he had to bow to the inevitable. He was beginning to understand how Napoleon felt on the deck of the Bellerophon when on the way to St. Helena., Do you remember the picture? He nodded—not dejectedly, but also not far from it.
“Well, in a day or two or three, according to conditions; we come out with it. We print the lady's name and her portrait—possibly not the best of all her photographs, but the only one I could—”
“Who is she?” burst from the lips of the reporter's victim.
Instantly the reporter's face became very serious. “I feared so, Mr. Merriwether,” he said, very quietly.
“Look here, my boy!” interrupted Mr. Merriwether, with an earnestness that had in it a threat. “I don't know what your game is and I don't care. I'll admit right now that you are a very clever young man and probably not a crook; but I tell you calmly, quietly, without any threats, that you are not going to publish any damned-fool article about my family in any paper in New York.”
The reporter rose and looked straight into the unblinking eyes of the great financier. Then he said, slowly, and, the old fellow admitted, distinctly impressively:
“And I tell you, twice as quietly and ten times as calmly, without any fool threats, that all the daily newspapers in New York and Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and ten thousand other towns in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Canal Zone, and countries in the Postal Union, are going to publish articles about your son Tom's engagement, and later on about his marriage. Understand once for all, that there are some things all your millions and all your will-power cannot do. This is one of them. It is the penalty of being a public character—or, if you prefer, of being an exceptionally great man. Do I understand that you have nothing to say about your son's coming marriage?”
E. H. Merriwether in less than five seconds thought of more than five thousand possibilities, all in connection with his son's marriage. Then he said, very slowly, fighting for time and a chance to escape:
“My son will marry whenever he and the young lady chiefly interested judge fit to do so. He and I are in perfect accord, as always.” Mr. Merriwether was looking into the too-fearless and too-intelligent gray-blue eyes of the reporter. Then he did what he did not often do in his Wall Street affrays—he capitulated. “Will you give me your word that you will not use for publication what I am about to tell you?”
“No, sir, I won't!” emphatically replied the reporter. “You might tell me something I already know and then you'd always think I had broken my word. I will not pledge myself not to print the name of your daughter-in-law-to-be; but anything that concerns you personally or your attitude toward your son's finacée, or hints of a family quarrel—or those things that offend a sensitive man—I promise not to print. You have some rights; but I also owe certain things to myself and my paper. I've been frank with you. You can be frank with me if you wish. I put it up to you.”