The physicians ascribed the President's death to heart failure,—which meant little more than that he was dead. They ventured to say that the heart failure had been superinduced by overwork. This verdict doubtless would have stood if a newspaper man the first at Hill-Top had not chanced to hear of a telegram.
The telegram could not be found although the secretary searched diligently for it. The energetic reporter conceived that that statement was a subterfuge which in some way betokened a lack of confidence in his discretion, and, besides, it smacked of mystery for a telegram to evaporate into thin air in a dead man's hand. Put on his mettle thus, he made it his business to know what was in that telegram. Being an old telegraph man himself, he hied him down to the station and made himself pleasant and useful to the youngish man in charge.
President Phillips had intended to await the decision of the convention in Washington, and all telegraphic arrangements for convention bulletins had been made accordingly. At the last moment Helen's trembling little letter had changed his purpose, and he had slipped quietly off to Hill-Top, notifying only Mr. Mackenzie how to communicate with him directly.
The moment the President's death had flashed upon the wires, the capacity of the little Stag Inlet office became sadly overtaxed. The perspiring and flustered operator was very grateful for the assistance of the kindly newspaper man who modestly proffered his help in getting the deluge of messages speedily copied, enveloped, addressed and dispatched. Once having his hand on the copy-file it was an easy thing for the good Samaritan to get the full text of the last message that had gone to Hill-Top.
He could not decide whether it was so very valuable now that Mr. Phillips was dead; but he sent it to his paper along with his other stuff, riding a dozen miles in a midnight search for an open telegraph key. Much pride he had in his achievement when he added to his news report a statement to his managing editor that the text of the telegram was a "beat" for his paper and might be displayed as "exclusive." But his feelings were very much hurt next day that they should have published his find under a Chicago dateline and robbed him of his glory.
THE PRESIDENT DIES OF A BROKEN HEART
He Takes the Telegram which Tells of
Defeat and Is Seen No More Alive
Chicago, July 3d—After a conference of the leaders of the Phillips cohorts this afternoon the following telegram was sent to the President at Stag Inlet: "We are moving heaven and earth; but the forces of evil are too many for us. First ballot to-morrow."
The news column was after that fashion. The leading editorial was a scream under the caption, "The Trusts Have Murdered Him!"
Mr. Mackenzie, who had sent the telegram, was mortally angry that the odium of actual defeat from which death had relieved his friend should have been fixed thus upon his memory. He was offended almost beyond endurance with his confidential clerk despite that young man's violent disclaimer of responsibility for the leak; but he was most enraged at the diabolical discretion of the managing editor of The Yellow in omitting the name of the sender of the telegram: which would necessitate that he admit having sent it before he could demand to know whence the paper had knowledge of it.