“They can have no prejudices, at all events,” he replied; “there has been no time for tradition to take root there. They will not be afraid to say what they think, one way or the other. I would not feel anxious at all if we had to stay there a month instead of a fortnight.”
“I should not wonder if reporters meet the train and ask for interviews long before we arrive at Chicago.”
“Is it possible? Well, let them come. I am told that if we should be snowed up, there are much worse persons to fear than our friends, the reporters. Mr. Abbey carries pistols, and the conductors and guards are armed. During the Bernhardt tour more than one plot to stop Abbey’s special trains was discovered. A band of masked men were disappointed at one place, and a company of desperadoes from a western camp at another. One of Abbey’s agents was attacked in his sleeping-car, and badly wounded, by men who sneaked on board during a stoppage near a signal station; but he made a good fight, and the guard coming quickly to his aid, the fellows got off. Travelling as we did, even from Boston to Baltimore, pulling up at lonely and unpeopled points, one can understand how easily a gang of reckless robbers might capture a train, the facilities for getting aboard and walking right through the cars being largely in favor of success. It was known, Mr. Abbey tells me, that Madame Bernhardt carried her diamonds about with her; and, acting on reliable information, he found it desirable to have a smart chief of police on the train, who had each end of her car protected at night by an armed guard. No such honor is, I suppose, provided for us; and then we do not go so far West, nor so near the frontiers, as she and her company went. I suppose Abbey is not chaffing us, as Raymond and those other fellows tried to do in London?”[35]
“Oh, no; Abbey’s is a true bill. In the West a detective well known to the thieves sat by Madame Bernhardt’s coachman whenever she went out, to or from the theatre, or anywhere else; and, apart from the weapons he carried, his courage and skill made him a terror to evil-doers. The western bandit is singularly discreet when he knows the reputation of the police is pledged against him in a public enterprise.
III.
The Chicago press justified my forecast of its enterprise. The story of one of its representatives (he was a baron, by the way, in his German Fatherland, though content to be a reporter in Chicago) is best told in his own way. He begins it with rather a series of “catching” titles, thus:—
A Chat with Mr. Irving.
A Daily News Reporter climbs into the English Tragedian’s Special Train, and Interviews him.