“It’s Blake, trying to speak. They’re giving him the ovation of his life!”
Katherine’s face set. “H’m!” said Billy grimly, and plunged again into his dictation. Now and then the uproar that followed a happy phrase of Blake almost drowned the voice of Billy, now and then Old Hosie from his post at the window broke in with a sentence of description of the tumultuous scene without; but despite these interruptions the story rattled swiftly on. Again and again Billy ran to the sink at the back of the office and let the clearing water splash over his head; his collar was a shapeless rag; he had to keep thrusting his dripping hair back from his forehead; his slight, chilled body was shivering in every member; but the story kept coming, coming, coming, a living, throbbing creation from his thin and twitching lips.
As Katherine’s flying hands set down the words, she thrilled as though this story were a thing entirely new to her. For Billy Harper, whatever faults inheritance or habit had fixed upon him, was a reporter straight from God. His trained mind had instantly seized upon and mastered all the dramatic values of the complicated story, and his English, though crude and rough-and-tumble from his haste, was vivid passionate, rousing. He told how Doctor West was the victim of a plot, a plot whose great victim was the city and people of Westville, and this plot he outlined in all its details. He told of Doctor Sherman’s part, at Blake’s compulsion. He told of the secret league between Blake and Peck. He declared the truth of the charges for which Bruce was then lying in the county jail. And finally—though this he did at the beginning of his story—he drove home in his most nerve-twanging words the fact that Blake the benefactor, Blake the applauded, was the direct cause of the typhoid epidemic.
As a fresh sheet was being run into the machine toward the end of the story there was another tremendous outburst from the Square, surpassing even the one of half an hour before.
“Blake’s just finished his speech,” called Old Hosie from the window. “The crowd wants to carry him on their shoulders.”
“They’d better hurry up; this is one of their last chances!” cried Billy.
Then he saw the foreman enter with a look of concern. “Any thing wrong, Jake?”
“One of the linotype men has skipped out,” was the answer.
“Well, what of that?” said Harper. “You’ve got one left.”
“It means that we’ll be delayed in getting out the paper. I hadn’t noticed it before, but Grant’s been gone some time. We’re quite a bit behind you, and Simmons alone can’t begin to handle that copy as fast as you’re sending it down.”