Cape of Storms: A Novel

by Percival Pollard

Belden handed a mug and a bottle over to him.

"By the way," cut in Marsboro, "ever had any more trouble with the neighbors here? Said you kept them awake Sunday nights with your unholy orgies, didn't they?"

"Yes. But I said if they were going to kick on that score I would get out an injunction against that girl of theirs that is always trying to play 'After the Ball', with one hand. So I fancy our lances are both at rest."

So, with much careless clatter, and exchange of banter, they ate and drank lustily until their hunger was appeased. Then, pushing their plates and mugs into the middle of the table they leaned back to enjoy the pleasures of the god Nicotine. And presently someone hinted that the empty plates and the litter of the late-lamentedness in general was not a cheering sight and they might as well proceed into the studio again. There was a shoving back of chairs, a trooping through the corridor, and they were all assembled once more in the front rooms. McRoy hid himself behind a book. The others grouped themselves around the piano. The plaintiff strains of Chevalier's "The Future Mrs. 'Awkins" filled the room, born aloft on the impetus of five pairs of lungs.

There was a violent ringing at the outer bell. It was some little time before the men at the piano heard the din; it was only at McRoy's muttered "Somebody's pulling your front door bell off the wires, Belden!" that the latter went to open. The men in the room could hear the sound of a man's voice, a quick passage of sentences, then good-nights, all vaguely, over the strains of the coster-ditty.

"What do you think," said Belden, coming in again, "has happened? It was Ditton, of the Telegraph—lives a door or two north—just dropped in to tell me a bit of news that he thought would interest me. Wooton of the 'Torch'? has disappeared, leaving the property deeply in debt. Nobody knows where he is. Jove, come to think of it, that's pretty rough news for you, Lancaster!"

"Yes," said Lancaster, "it is. And yet there is one consolation, he paid me within a week of what was due me."

There was a cessation of all other discussion to make room for the consideration of this bit of news. Everybody agreed that it was too bad that so good a sheet as the "Torch" should go the way of the majority. Concerning Wooton the opinions differed. Belden began to apologize to Lancaster for having led him into this "mess," as he called it, while Stanley sneered at everybody for not having seen through Wooton long ago.

"He is inordinately vain," said Stanley, "and frightfully extravagant. Clever. Lazy—awfully lazy. He can sit back in his chair and tell you how to run the New York Herald, and he has been able to get nothing profitable into or out of his paper from the time he began until now. He theorizes beautifully; the only thing he can really do successfully is to borrow money and talk to women. He used to amuse me just in the way an actor amuses me. Half the time I think he was deceiving even himself. I always thought he would do this very thing, one of these days. He used to have what old women call 'spells' now and again, when he found himself hard up for cash, that were really the most curious performances. He would stay away from his office altogether; genius as he was in warding off collectors, he used to prefer not to face them sometimes. There was—I should say there is—a woman, one of the cleverest, most cultured woman in town, who was fond of him in an elderly-sister sort of way, and he used to go to her and borrow money. Think of it: borrow money from a woman! She saw through him long ago, I know, and yet he used to use such artifice—such tears, and promises of betterment as the men employed!—that she always helped him in the end. Then he gambled to try to make the big stake that would enable him to run a rich man's paper; the only result is that he got deeper and deeper into the hole. All the time he avoided his office; if he scraped up a banknote or two he would send them along, per messenger boy, to the foreman of the composing-room and have the printers paid, at least. You must pay the printers and the pressmen, you know, even if you let a lot of literary devils starve! And then some guardian angel would send along a college chum, or some fellow with more loyality than discretion, and A.B. Wooton would make a big 'borrow' and be once more the genial, cynical man-of-the-world that the rest of you know. This time I presume the angel refused to come. The end had to come; it was simply a huge game of 'bluff.'"

"How is it you know all this?" asked one of the others.