Harkins reflectively looked him over, now with a little concern. Pride in such tatters, that would not accept alms, merited consideration. Then, too, Dodds had just been dismissed and someone must replace him. But the stranger! He was hardly an acceptable candidate. Still, there was a frankness in the mottled face and twinkling eyes, an odd note in the voice just tinged with an Anglicized brogue, that appealed to Harkins. In the ensuing moment of hesitancy the question was decided for him.
A telephone bell sounded at the city editor's elbow. He turned in his chair, clapped the receiver to his ear, listened a moment, replied briefly, hung up the receiver and turned to the stranger. Mead, the only one of the force at liberty, had leaned forward in his chair as the city editor answered the 'phone. Now he settled back again in deep disgust as Harkins addressed the disreputable visitor.
"I'll try you," he said briefly. "Know the town at all?"
"No, but I can find it," was the reply.
"There's a big row on at the corner of Elm and Market streets," said Harkins. "Beer and brickbats, tough locality. Rival nests of low foreigners. You'll have to step lively, forms close early tonight. By the way, take Mead with you and you take charge. It's a job if you win out. If not, you can travel."
The stranger grabbed his hat and vanished, the resentful cub at his heels. The city editor glanced at the big clock in the corner and returned to his task. More men came in, including Kirk and Peters, the convention having finally adjourned. The manuscripts multiplied on the readers' desks. On all sides men were laboring furiously.
Three-quarters of an hour had elapsed when there was an upward whisk of the elevator and into the big room hurried the seedy stranger. Mead, no longer resentful, followed him. Indeed, there was something of homage in Mead's tribute toward the other, the involuntary tribute that any honest tyro must pay, in any trade, to the experienced hand who knows his business. Mead was perspiring. So was the stranger, who had evidently kept himself and his force moving. Straight to Mead's desk strode the new arrival, tearing off his shabby coat as he went, Mead heeling. The leader flung himself into Mead's chair, waving his hand toward the vacant desk next to it, where the cub meekly seated himself and fell to writing. He had been assigned to his part of the tale by the vagrant journalist as the two were rushed back to the office in a cab from the scene of the trouble.
The stranger drew from his vest pocket the stub of a soft-leaded pencil about three inches long. The point was inserted for a thoughtful instant in his mouth, then was slapped swiftly upon a pad. Sprawled forward, with elbows on the desk, he wrapped his calves securely around the legs of his chair. Thus he began the strewing of words upon the paper, in the execrable handwriting and at the phenomenal speed which have become traditions of that office, where each has remained unrivaled in the paper's annals. Oblivious of his surroundings, he bent over his desk like a jockey in the saddle, eyes glued on the pad whose leaves he was covering at lightning speed. As he proceeded he tossed the finished sheets carelessly aside without pausing. Mead, too, under the benign influence of time-pressure, took a long stride forward in newspaper requirements by forgetting to "pad" uselessly. Meanwhile the city editor's assistants gathered up the finished sheets and carried them away to be hastily edited and shot upward to the compositors.
It was, in reportorial parlance, "hot stuff." A man had been killed in this battle of the slums and the criminal was somewhere in hiding. Many men were injured, some seriously. Extra policemen had been summoned. The detail had charged the mob with sanguinary results, both to the mob and the bluecoats. As usual some non-combatants had suffered. There had been a number of arrests. The patrol wagons had been busy, the gongs of the hospital ambulances had sounded their warning as they dashed to the relief of the injured. It was the big story of that issue, grim and formidable, dwarfing even the stormy convention in its dramatic features, which partook of the sombre dignity of the tragic under the masterly treatment of the tattered scribe. It was, too, a chaotic story, with a certain swirl, a swift rush of events that had piled one upon the other with a cyclonic swiftness that must have staggered a neophyte and taxed to the utmost the highest resources of brain and nerve, together with the most feverish energy of the veteran.
In a full, rounded entirety, dwarfing the efforts of the rival morning dailies,—though some of them had several experienced men on the story,—the parish of the Courier read of the memorable riot in that issue. It was actually impressive to watch the story pouring from the point of that flying, disreputable pencil, flowing down the sheets in a mad torrent, the scenes brought before the reader's eyes with an irresistible force that made them visible in graphic word pictures, as if actually photographed. The stub rushed on, weaving the main web of the tale, while Mead's pencil picked up the loose ends in the form of minor details. Harkins marveled as he watched the story's development. Its size surpassed his expectations. Had he fully understood its scope, several of his best men would have been taken summarily from their tasks and sent post-haste to the scene. Not till this tattered knight of the road returned, with the cub in tow, had Harkins known of the snowball's growth. Yet here it was at last, the final sheet of what Harkins' trained journalistic sense told him was a superb handling of an unusually difficult assignment. He sent the last sheets upstairs and turned to the stranger and his faithful cub, who were mopping fevered faces.