He smiled serenely, and I could have kissed his hands. At the same time, if you please, I was already debating whether one so promising as myself should leave the newspaper profession!
But even more than my good fortune at gleaning this bit of news or beat, as it proved, I was impressed by the company I was keeping and the realm in which I now moved as if by right—great hotels, a newspaper office with which I was connected, this senator, these politicians, the display of comfort and luxury on every hand. Only a little while back I was an inexperienced, dreaming collector for an “easy-payment” company, and now look at me! Here I sat on this grand balcony, the senator to my right, a table between us, all the lovely panorama of the lake and Michigan Drive below. What a rise! From now on, no doubt, I would do much better. Was I not even now being offered the secretaryship to a senator?
In due time I left and ran to the Richelieu, but my brain was seething with my great rise and my greater achievement in being the first to know of and report to my paper this decisive conference. If that were true I should certainly have discovered what my paper and all papers were most eager to know.
CHAPTER XI
What the senator had told me was true. The deciding conference was on, and I determined to hang about the corridors of the Richelieu until it was over. The secretary, whom I found closeted with others (not newspaper men) in a room on the second floor, was good enough to see me when I mentioned Senator McEntee’s name, and told me to return at six-thirty, when he was sure the conference would be over and a general statement be issued to the press. If I wished, I might come back at five-thirty. This dampened my joy in the thought that I had something exclusive, though I was later cheered by the thought that I had probably saved my paper from defeat anyhow for we were too poor to belong to the general news service. As a matter of fact, my early information was a cause of wonder in the office, the political man himself coming down late in the night to find out how I had learned so soon. I spoke of my friend Senator McEntee as though I had known him for years. The political man merely looked at me and said: “Well, you ought to get along in politics on one of the papers, if nowhere else.”
The capture of this one fact, as I rather felt at the time, was my making in this newspaper office and hence in the newspaper world at large, in so far as I ever was made.
At five-thirty that afternoon I was on hand, and, true to his word, the secretary outlined exactly what conclusions the conference had reached. Afterward he brought out a type-written statement and read from it such facts as he wished me to have. Cleveland was to be nominated. Another man, Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, of whom I had never heard, was to be nominated for Vice-President. There were other details, so confusing that I could scarcely grasp them, but I made some notes and flew to the office and tried to write out all I had heard. I know now that I made a very bad job of it, but Maxwell worked so hard and so cheerfully that he saved me. From one source and another he confirmed or modified my statements, wrote an intelligent introduction and turned it in.
“You’re one of the damnedest crack-brained loons I ever saw,” he said at one place, cutting out a great slice of my stuff, “but you seem to know how to get the news just the same, and you’re going to be able to write. If I could just keep you under my thumb for four or five weeks I think I could make something out of you.”
At this I ventured to lay one hand over his shoulder in an affectionate and yet appealing way, but he looked up frowningly and said: “Cut the gentle con work, Theodore. I know you. You’re just like all other newspaper men, or will be: grateful when things are coming your way. If I were out of a job or in your position you’d do just like all the others: pass me up. I know you better than you know yourself. Life is a God-damned stinking, treacherous game, and nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of every thousand are bastards. I don’t know why I do this for you,” and he cut some more of my fine writing, “but I like you. I don’t expect to get anything back. I never do. People always trim me when I want anything. There’s nobody home if I’m knocking. But I’m such a God-damned fool that I like to do it. But don’t think I’m not on, or that I’m a genial ass that can be worked by every Tom, Dick and Harry.” And after visiting me with that fat superior smile he went on working. I stared, nervous, restless, resentful, sorrowful, trying to justify myself to life and to him.