Mr. Blake barely glanced at it and handed it back, at the same time reaching for his desk telephone.
“Mr. Foxman,” he said, “there may be some pain but there is also considerable pleasure to me in dealing with a reasonable man. I see that your mind is made up. Why then should we quibble? You win, Mr. Foxman—you win [348] in a walk. Whatever opinions I may entertain as to your private character and whatever opinions you may entertain as to my private character, I may at least venture to congratulate you upon your intelligence. … Oh, yes, while I think of it, there is one other thing, Mr. Foxman: I don’t suppose you would care to tell me just how you came into possession of the information contained in your article?”
“I would not.”
“I thought as much. Excuse me one moment, if you please.” And with that Mr. Blake, still wearing his poker face, joggled the lever of the telephone.
What with certain negotiations, privately conducted and satisfactorily concluded at the brokers’, Mr. Foxman was engaged until well on into the afternoon. This being done, he walked across to the front of the stock exchange, where he found a rank of taxis waiting in line for fares when the market should close. The long, lean months of depression had passed and the broker gentry did not patronise the subway these days. Daily at three o’clock, being awearied by much shearing of woolly, fat sheep, they rode uptown in taxicabs, utterly regardless of mounting motor tariffs and very often giving fat tips to their motor drivers besides. But it is safe to say no broker, however sure he might be of the return of national confidence, gave a fatter tip that day than the one which [349] Mr. Foxman handed to the taxicab driver who conveyed him to his club, in the Upper Forties. Mr. Foxman was in a mood to be prodigal with his small change.
Ordinarily he would have spent an hour or two of the afternoon and all of the evening until midnight or later at The Clarion office. But on this particular day he didn’t go there at all. Somehow, he felt those familiar surroundings, wherein he had worked his way to the topmost peg of authority, and incidentally to the confidence of his employer and his staff, might be to him distastefully reminiscent of former times. Mind you, he had no shame for the thing he had done and was doing; but instead had only a great and splendid exhilaration. Still, he was just as comfortable in his own mind, staying away from that office. It could get along without him for this once. It might as well get used to the sensation anyway; for very shortly, as he figured the prospect, it would have to get along without him.
At his club he ate a belated luncheon and to kill the time played billiards with two other men, playing with his accustomed skill and with a fine show of spirits. Billiards killed the time for him until seven-thirty, which exactly suited his purpose, because at seven-thirty the acting make-up editor should be reporting for duty down at The Clarion shop.
Mr. Foxman entered a sound-proof booth in the little corridor that opened off the [350] main-entry hall of the club and, after calling up the night desk and notifying Sloan he would not come to the office at all that night, asked Sloan to send Hemburg to the telephone.
“Is that you, Hemburg?” he was saying, half a minute later. “Listen, Hemburg, this is very important: You remember that story I turned over to you last night? … Yes, that’s the same one—the story I told you we would run, provided I could establish one main point. Well, I couldn’t establish that point—we can’t prove up on our principal allegation. That makes it dangerous to have the thing even standing in type. So you go upstairs and kill it—kill it yourself with your own hands, I mean. I don’t want to take any chances on a slip-up. Dump the type and have it melted up. And, Hemburg—say nothing to anyone about either the story itself or what has happened to it. Understand me? … Good. And, Hemburg, here’s another thing: You recall the other story that I told you was being held for release—the one on the Mexican situation? It’s got a Washington date line over it. Well, shove it in to-night as your leading news feature. If we hold it much longer it’s liable to get stale—the way things are breaking down there in Mexico. All right; good-bye!”
He had rung off and hung up and was coming out of the little booth when a fresh inspiration came to him and he stepped back in again. One factor remained to be eliminated—Singlebury. [351] Until that moment Mr. Foxman had meant to sacrifice Singlebury by the simple expedient of sending him next day on an out-of-town assignment—over into New Jersey, or up into New England perhaps—and then firing him by wire, out of hand, for some alleged reportorial crime, either of omission or of commission. It would be easy enough to cook up the pretext, and from his chief’s summary dismissal of him Singlebury would have no appeal. But suppose Singlebury came back to town, as almost surely he would, and suppose he came filled with a natural indignation at having been discharged in such fashion, and suppose, about the same time, he fell to wondering why his great story on the Pearl Street trolley steal had not been printed—certainly Singlebury had sense enough to put two and two together—and suppose on top of that he went gabbling his suspicions about among the born gossips of Park Row? It might be awkward.