One day McEnnis and I called on the chief of police, demanding to know why he was so indifferent to our crusade and the facts we put before him. To my youthful amazement and enlightenment he shook his fist in our faces and exclaimed: “You can go to the devil, and so can the Globe! I know who’s back of this campaign, and why. Well, go on and play your little game! Shout all you want to. Who’s going to listen to you? You haven’t any circulation. You’re not going to make a mark of me, and you’re not going to get me fired out of here for not performing my duty. Your paper is only a dirty political rag without any influence.”
“Is it!” taunted McEnnis. “Well, you just wait and see. I think you’ll change your mind as to that,” and we stalked solemnly out.
And in the course of time he did change his mind. Some of the fakers had to be arrested and fined and their places closed up, and the longer we talked and exposed the worse it became for them. Finally a dealer approached me one morning and offered me an eighteen-carat gold watch, to be selected by me from any jewelry store in the city and paid for by him, if I would let his store alone. I refused. Another, a dark, dusty, most amusing little Jew, offered me a diamond pin, insisting upon sticking it in my cravat, and said: “Go see! Go see! Ask any jeweler what he thinks, if that ain’t a real stone! If it ain’t—if he says no—bring it back to me and I’ll give you a hundred dollars in cash for it. Don’t you mention me no more now. Be a nice young feller now. I’m a hard-workin’ man just like anybody else. I run a honest place.”
I carried the pin back to the office and gave it to McEnnis. He stared at me in amazement.
“Why did you do this?” he exclaimed. “You shouldn’t have taken this, at all. It may get the paper in trouble. They may have had witnesses to this—but maybe not. Perhaps this fellow is just trying to protect himself. Anyway, we’re going to take this thing back to him and don’t take anything more, do you hear, money or anything. You can’t do that sort of thing. If I didn’t think you were honest I’d fire you right now.”
He took me into the office of the editor-in-chief, who looked at me with still, gray-blue eyes and listened to my story. He dismissed me and talked with McEnnis for a while. When the latter came out he exclaimed triumphantly: “He sees that you’re honest, all right, and he’s tickled to death. Now we’ll take this pin back, and then you’ll write out the whole story just as it happened.”
On the way we went to a magistrate to swear out a charge of attempted bribery against this man, and later in the same day I went with the detective to serve the warrant. To myself I seemed to be swimming in a delicious sea of life. “What a fine thing life is!” I thought. “Here I am getting along famously because I can write. Soon I will get more money, and maybe some day people will begin to hear of me. I will get a fine reputation in the newspaper world.”
Thanks to this vigorous campaign, of which McEnnis was the inspiration and guiding spirit, all these auction shops were eventually closed. In so much at least John B. MacDonald had achieved a revenge.
As for myself, I felt that there must be some serious and favorable change impending for me; and true enough, within a fortnight after this the change came. I had noticed that McEnnis had become more and more friendly. He introduced me to his wife one day when she was in the office and told her in my presence what splendid work I was doing. Often he would take me to lunch or to a saloon for drinks (for which I would pay), and would then borrow a dollar or two or three, no part of which he ever returned. He lectured me on the subject of study, urging me to give myself a general education by reading, attending lectures and the like. He wanted me to look into painting, music, sculpture. As he talked the blood would swirl in my head, and I kept thinking what a brilliant career must be awaiting me. One thing he did was to secure me a place on the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
Just at this time a man whose name I have forgotten—Leland, I think—the Washington correspondent of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, came to Chicago to report the preliminary preparations for the great World’s Fair which was to open the following spring. Already the construction of a number of great buildings in Jackson Park had been begun, and the newspapers throughout the country were on the alert as to its progress. Leland, as I may as well call him, a cool, capable observer and writer, was an old friend of McEnnis. McEnnis introduced me to him and made an impassioned plea in my behalf for an opportunity for me to do some writing for the Globe-Democrat in St. Louis under his direction. The idea was to get this man to allow me to do some World’s Fair work for him, on the side, in addition to my work on the Globe, and then later to persuade Joseph B. McCullagh of the former paper to make a place for me in St. Louis.