“What is he swearing about?”
“He wants to know why I left the cable yesterday. He says he has been trying to call me up for the last twenty-four hours. Ever since I sent my message at three o’clock. The home office is jumping mad, and want me discharged. They won’t do that, though,” he said, in a cheerful aside, “because they haven’t paid me my salary for the last eight months. He says—great Scott! this will please you, Gordon—he says there have been over two hundred queries for matter from papers all over the United States, and from Europe. Your paper beat them on the news, and now the home office is packed with San Francisco reporters, and the telegrams are coming in every minute, and they have been abusing him for not answering them, and he says that I’m a fool. He wants as much as you can send, and all the details. He says all the papers will have to put ‘By Yokohama Cable Company’ on the top of each message they print, and that that is advertising the company, and is sending the stock up. It rose fifteen points on ’change in San Francisco to-day, and the president and the other officers—”
“Oh, I don’t want to hear about their old company,” snapped out Gordon, pacing up and down in despair. “What am I to do? that’s what I want to know. Here I have the whole country stirred up and begging for news. On their knees for it, and a cable all to myself and the only man on the spot, and nothing to say. I’d just like to know how long that German idiot intends to wait before he begins shelling this town and killing people. He has put me in a most absurd position.”
“Here’s a message for you, Gordon,” said Stedman, with business-like calm. “Albert Gordon, Correspondent,” he read: “Try American consul. First message O.K.; beat the country; can take all you send. Give names of foreign residents massacred, and fuller account blowing up palace. Dodge.”
The expression on Gordon’s face as this message was slowly read off to him, had changed from one of gratified pride to one of puzzled consternation.
“What’s he mean by foreign residents massacred, and blowing up of palace?” asked Stedman, looking over his shoulder anxiously. “Who is Dodge?”
“Dodge is the night editor,” said Gordon, nervously. “They must have read my message wrong. You sent just what I gave you, didn’t you?” he asked.
“Of course I did,” said Stedman, indignantly.
“I didn’t say anything about the massacre of anybody, did I?” asked Gordon. “I hope they are not improving on my account. What am I to do? This is getting awful. I’ll have to go out and kill a few people myself. Oh, why don’t that Dutch captain begin to do something! What sort of a fighter does he call himself? He wouldn’t shoot at a school of porpoises. He’s not—”
“Here comes a message to Leonard T. Travis, American consul, Opeki,” read Stedman. “It’s raining messages to-day. ‘Send full details of massacre of American citizens by German sailors.’ Secretary of—great Scott!” gasped Stedman, interrupting himself and gazing at his instrument with horrified fascination—“the Secretary of State.”