“Parkhurst!” he called.
Parkhurst, one of the Planet's star men, sauntered over to the desk. He had planned to do other things with his time this nice Sunday afternoon. Monday-morning stories are not apt to be exciting. Therefore he limped pathetically in anticipation of the excuse he proposed to make to get off. He was Williams's chum.
“Jimmy,” said the city editor, with his habitual air of giving assignments as though they were decorations awarded for distinguished services, “I just had Bill Stewart, of the Hotel Brabant, on the telephone. He says there is a man there who has seven million dollars in gold-dust in the engine-room of the hotel. Klondike mine-owner. Does not believe in banks, I guess. Takes mighty big stocking to hold the cash—”
“Do you want me to write the story?” interrupted Parkhurst, coldly. It was his way of showing his city editor his place.
“Coal-Oil Johnny up to date! Don't fall for any press agent—”
Parkhurst forgot the excuse he was going to make. His limp vanished. The story promised well. He hastened to the Brabant and saw the room clerk, Stewart, who had tipped off the city editor.
“Yes; he is in,” said Stewart. “But if you think it is another case of Coal-Oil Johnny you've got another guess coming. Not that he is a tightwad; he is liberal enough with his nuggets, the bell-hops say. But he is no fool. And yet—think of it!—he takes into Seattle with him from Nome eight or ten millions of gold-dust! There he hires a special train to bring him and his gold-dust to New York. He arrives at the Grand Central in the early morning. They hustle round and find seven trucks to carry the boxes of gold-dust for him. He follows in a taxicab. He comes straight to this hotel—”
Stewart here swelled up his chest. It made the reporter say, amiably:
“It was considered a good hotel once; but news travels slowly in the frozen North.”
“He comes up here, registers, and then expects me to let him take the whole fifteen tons of gold up to his room. What do you know about that? Well, then he wanted to hire a whole floor so as to distribute the weight. But you know it is a highly concentrated weight. No floor would stand it. Gold is the heaviest thing there is.”