Will Irwin, while reporting a small war between two Chinese societies, wrote an article one night about the arrest of two Hip Sing tong men who were wearing chain armour under their blouses. Clarke, much interested, asked Irwin all about the armour.
“It reminds me of ‘King Solomon’s Mines,’” remarked Irwin, “and the chain armour that the heroes had made in Sheffield to wear in Africa.”
“Yes,” replied Clarke, who had not read the Haggard novel in fifteen years; “but it wasn’t Sheffield—it was Birmingham.”
Clarke had a sense of responsibility that showed itself in nervousness. On a night when news was breaking, that nervousness was exhibited in his trips, every ten minutes, to the ice-water tank; in the constant lighting and relighting of his pipe; in the quick turn of his head at the approach of a reporter. Yet his nervousness was not contagious. So long as Clarke was nervous, the men under him felt that they need not be. He did all the worrying, and, unlike most worriers, got results from it.
Let him know that something had happened in the city, and his drag-net system was started. No matter how remote the happening, how apparently hopeless the clue, he let neither man nor telephone rest until every possible corner had been searched for the guilty news item. Once the situation was in hand he would return to the adornment of a head-line or the working out of some abstruse problem in mathematics—perhaps the angles of a sun-dial, for Clarke’s hobby was gnomonics, and he knew dials from Ptolemy’s time down. As a rest from mathematics he might write a limerick in Greek, and then carefully tear it up.
Almost every newspaper in New York tried, at one time or another, to take Clarke from the Sun. One night an emissary from one of the apostles of the then new journalism entered the Sun office and sent his card to Mr. Clarke. When the night city editor appeared, he whispered:
“Mr. —— says that if you’ll ascertain the highest salary the Sun will pay you to stay, he’ll double it.”
Clarke uttered the strange sound that was his indulgence when disagreeably disturbed—a cross between a growl and a grunt—and turned back toward his desk.
“He’ll triple it!” cried the tempter.
Although Clarke heard the words, he kept on to his desk, and not only never mentioned the matter, but probably never thought of it again.