Wandering about this building at this time was an old red-faced, red-nosed German, with a protuberant stomach, very genial, dull and apparently unimportant. He was, as I later learned, the real owner of the paper, the major portion of the stock being in his name; and yet, as every one seemed to understand, he never dared pose as such but must slip about, as much overawed as the rest of us. I was a mere underling and new to the place, and yet I could see it. A more apologetic mien and a more obliging manner was never worn by any mortal, especially when he was in the vicinity of McCullagh’s office. His name was Daniel M. Hauser. For the most part he wandered about the building like a ghost, seeming to wish to be somebody or to say something but absolutely without meaning. The short, stout Napoleonic editor ruled supreme.
By degrees I made friends with a number of those that worked here: Bob Hazard; Jock Bellairs, son of the Captain Bellairs who presided over the city zoo; Charlie Benson, and a long list of others whose names escape me now. Of all those on the city staff I was inclined to like Hazard most, for he was a personage, a character, quick, gay, intellectual, literary, forceful. Why he never came to greater literary fame I do not know, for he seemed to have all the flair and feeling necessary for the task. He was an only son of some man who had long been a resident of St. Louis and was himself well known about town. He lived with a mother and sister in southwest St. Louis in a small cottage which always pleased me because of its hominess, and supported that mother and sister in loyal son-like fashion. I had not been long on the paper before I was invited there to dinner, and this in spite of a rivalry which was almost immediately and unconsciously set up between us the moment I arrived and which endured in a mild way even after our more or less allied literary interests had drawn us socially together. At his home I met his sister, a mere slip of a tow-headed girl, whom later on I saw in vaudeville as a headliner. Hazard I encountered years later as a blasé correspondent in Washington, representing a league of papers. He had then but newly completed a wild-West thriller, done in cold blood and with an eye to a quick sale. Assuming that I had influence with publishers and editors, he invoked my aid. I gave him such advice and such letters as I could. But only a few months later I read that Robert Hazard, well-known newspaper correspondent, living with his wife and child in some Washington residence section, had placed a revolver to his temple and ended it all. Why, I have often wondered. He was seemingly so well fitted mentally and physically to enjoy life.... Or is it mental fitness that really kills the taste for life?
I would not dwell on him at such length save for some other things which I propose later to narrate. For the moment I wish to turn to another individual, “Jock” Bellairs, who impressed me as a most curious compound of indifference, wisdom, literary and political sense and a hard social cunning. He had a capacity for (as some one in the office once phrased it) a “lewd and profane life.” He was the chief police reporter at a building known as the “Four Courts,” an institution which housed, among other things, four judicial chambers of differing jurisdiction, as well as the county jail, the city detention wards, the office of the district attorney, the chief of police, chief of detectives, the city attorney, and a “reporters’ room” where all the local reporters were permitted to gather and were furnished paper, ink, tables.
A more dismal atmosphere than that which prevailed in this building, and in similar institutions in all the cities in which I ever worked, would be hard to find. In Chicago it was the city hall and county courthouse, with its police attachment; in Pittsburgh the county jail; in New York the Tombs and Criminal Courts Building, with police headquarters as a part of its grim attachment. I know of nothing worse. These places, essential as they are, are always low in tone, vile, and defile nearly all they touch. They have a corrupting effect upon those with whom they come in contact and upon those who are employed to administer law or “justice.” Harlots, criminals, murderers, buzzard lawyers, political judges, detectives, police agents, and court officials generally—what a company! I have never had anything to do with one of these institutions in any city as reporter, plaintiff or assisting friend, without sensing anew the brutality and horror of legal administration. The petty tyrannies that are practiced by underlings and minor officials! The “grafting” of low, swinish brains! The tawdry pomp of ignorant officials! The cruelty and cunning of agents of justice! “Set a thief to catch a thief.” Clothe these officials as you will, in whatsoever uniforms of whatsoever splendor or sobriety; give them desks of rosewood and walls of flowered damask; entitle them as you choose, High and Mightiness This and That—still they remain the degraded things they have always been, equals of the criminals and the crimes they are supposed to do away with. It cannot be helped; it is a law of chemistry, of creation. Offal breeds maggots to take care of it, to nullify its stench; carrion has its buzzards, carrion crows and condors. So with criminals and those petty officials of the lower courts and jails who are set to catch them.
But this is a wandering paragraph and has little to do with “Jock” Bellairs, except that he was of and yet not of this particular atmosphere. The first time I saw him I felt compelled to study him, for he seemed somehow to suggest this atmosphere to which he was appointed as reporter. He was in a way, and yet with pleasing reservations, the man for this task. He had a sense of humor and a devil-may-care approach to all this. Whenever anything of real import broke loose he was always the one to be called upon for information or aid, because he was in close touch with the police and detectives, who were his cronies and ready to aid him. And whenever anything happened that was beyond his power to manage he called up the office for aid. On more than one occasion, some “mystery” coming up, I was the one delegated to help him, the supposition being that it was likely to yield a “big” story, bigger than he had time for, being a court fixture. I then sought him out at the Four Courts and was given what he knew, whereupon I began investigations on my own account. Nearly always I found him lolling about with other reporters and detectives, a chair tilted back, possibly a game of cards going on between him and the reporters of other papers, a bottle of whisky in his pocket—“to save time,” as he once amusingly remarked—and a girl or two present, friends of one or other of these newspaper men, their “dollies.” He would rise and explain to me just what was going on, whisper confidentially in my ear the name of some other newspaper man who had been put on the case by one of the other papers, perhaps ask me to mention the name of some shabby policeman or detective who had been assigned to the case, one who was “a good fellow” and who could be depended upon to help us in the future.
I often had to smile, he was so naïve and yet so wise in his position, so matter-of-fact and commonplace about it all. Sometimes he would give me the most befuddling information as to how the news got out: he and John Somebody or Other were down at Maggie Sanders’s place in Chestnut Street the other night, where he heard from a detective, who was telling somebody else, who told somebody else, and so on. Then, if there was a prisoner in the case, he would take me to him, or tell me where some individual or the body was to be found if there was a body. Then, after I had gone about my labors, he would return to his card-game, his girl and his bottle. There were stories afloat of outings with these girls, or the using of some empty room in this building for immoral purposes, with the consent of complaisant officials. And all about, of course, was this atmosphere of detained criminals, cases at trial, hurrying parents and members of families, weeping mothers and sisters—a mess.
On an average of twice a month during my stay in St. Louis I was called to this building on one errand and another, and always I went with a sicky and sinking sensation, and always I came away from it breathing a sigh of relief. To me it was a horrible place, a pest-hole of suffering and error and trickery, and yet necessary enough, I know.