Just the same, this man, because of his vital, aggressive, restless, working mood, and his vaulting ambition to be all that there was to be of journalistic force in America, was making a veritable hell of his paper and the lives of those who worked for him. And although he himself was not present at the time but was sailing around the world on a yacht, or living in a villa on the Riviera, or at Bar Harbor, or in his town house in New York or London, you could feel the feverish and disturbing and distressing ionic tang of his presence in this room as definitely as though he were there in the flesh. Air fairly sizzled with the ionic rays of this black star. Of secretaries to this editor-publisher and traveling with him at the time but coming back betimes to nose about the paper and cause woe to others, there were five. Of sons, by no means in active charge but growing toward eventual control, two. Of managing editors, all slipping about and, as the newspaper men seemed to think, spying on each other, at one time as many as seven. He had so little faith in his fellow-man, and especially such of his fellow-men as were so unfortunate as to have to work for him, that he played off one against another as might have the council of the Secret Ten in Venice, or as did the devils who ruled in the Vatican in the Middle Ages. Every man’s hand, as I came to know in the course of time, was turned against that of every other. All were thoroughly distrustful of each other and feared the incessant spying that was going on. Each, as I was told and as to a certain extent one could feel, was made to believe that he was the important one, or might be, presuming that he could prove that the others were failures or in error. Proposed editorials, suggestions for news features, directions as to policy and what not, were coming in from him every hour via cable or telegraph. Nearly every issue of any importance was being submitted to him by the same means. He was, as described by this same Alleyne Ireland, undoubtedly semi-neurasthenic, a disease-demonized soul, who could scarcely control himself in anything, a man who was fighting an almost insane battle with life itself, trying to be omnipotent and what not else, and never to die.
But in regard to the men working here how sharp a sword of disaster seemed suspended above them by a thread, the sword of dismissal or of bitter reprimand or contempt. They had a kind of nervous, resentful terror in their eyes as have animals when they are tortured. All were either scribbling busily or hurrying in or out. Every man was for himself. If you had asked a man a question, as I ventured to do while sitting here, not knowing anything of how things were done here, he looked at you as though you were a fool, or as though you were trying to take something away from him or cause him trouble of some kind. In the main they hustled by or went on with their work without troubling to pay the slightest attention to you. I had never encountered anything like it before, and only twice afterwards in my life did I find anything which even partially approximated it, and both times in New York. After the peace and ease of Pittsburgh—God! But it was immense, just the same—terrific.
CHAPTER LXXII
After I had waited an hour or so, a boy came up and said: “The city editor wants to see you.” I hurried forward to the desk of that Poohbah, who merely handed me a small clipping from another paper giving an account of some extra-terrestrial manifestations that had been taking place in a graveyard near Elizabeth, and told me to “see what there is in that.” Unsophisticated as I was as to the ways of the metropolis, and assuming, Western-fashion, that I might ask a question of my new chief, I ventured a feeble “Where is that?” For my pains I received as contemptuous a look as it is possible for one human being to give another.
“Back of the directory! Back of the directory!” came the semi-savage reply, and not quite realizing what was meant by that I retired precipitately, trying to think it out.
Almost mechanically I went to the directory, but fumbling through that part of it which relates to streets and their numbers I began to realize that Elizabeth was a town and not a street. At a desk near the directory I noticed a stout man of perhaps forty, rotund and agreeable, who seemed to be less fierce and self-centered than some of the others. He had evidently only recently entered, for he had kicked off a pair of overshoes and laid a greatcoat over a chair beside him and was scribbling.
“Can you tell me how I can get to Elizabeth?” I inquired of him.
“Sure,” he said, looking up and beginning to chuckle. “I haven’t been in the city very long myself, but I know where that is. It’s on the Jersey Central, about twelve miles out. You’ll catch a local by going down to the Liberty Street ferry. I heard him tell you ‘Back of the directory,’” he added genially. “You mustn’t mind that—that’s what they always tell you here, these smart alecks,” and he chuckled, very much like my friend McCord. “They’re the most inconsiderate lot I ever went up against, but you have to get used to it. Out where I came from they’ll give you a civil answer once in a while, but here it’s ‘Back of the directory,’” and he chuckled again.
“And where do you come from?” I asked.