The Clarion Part 51

"In the 'Clarion'?" almost shouted Ellis.

"Certainly. Let's have Wayne send a reporter around to Pierce. If Pierce won't give us an interview, we'll reprint the 'Telegram's,' with credit."

"We'd be cutting our own throats, and playing Pierce's game. Besides, stuff about ourselves isn't news."

Hal's inexperience had this virtue, that it was free of the besetting and prejudicial superst.i.tions of the craft of print. "If it's interesting, it's the 'Clarion' kind of news."

Ellis, about to protest further, met the younger man's level gaze, and swallowed hard.

"All right," he said. "I'll tell Wayne."

So the "Clarion" violated another tradition of newspaperdom, to the amused contempt of its rivals, who were, however, possibly not quite so amused or so contemptuous as they appeared editorially to be. Also it followed up the interview with an explicit statement of its own intentions in the matter, which were not precisely music to the savage breast of E.M. Pierce.

Evidences of that formidable person's hostilities became increasingly manifest from day to day. One morning a fire marshal dropped casually in upon the "Clarion" office, looked the premises over, and called the owner's attention to several minor and unsuspected violations of the law, the adjustment of which would involve no small inconvenience and several hundred dollars outlay. By a curious coincidence, later in the day, a factory inspector happened around,--a newspaper office being, legally, within the definition of a factory,--and served a summons on McGuire Ellis as publisher, for permitting smoking in the city room.

From time immemorial every edition of every newspaper in the United States of America has evolved out of rolling clouds of tobacco smoke: but the "Clarion" alone, apparently, had come within the purview of the law. Subsequently, Hal learned, to his amus.e.m.e.nt, that all the other newspaper offices were placarded with notices of the law in Yiddish, so that none might be unduly disturbed thereby! To give point to the discrimination, down on the street, a zealous policeman arrested one of the "Clarion's" bulk-paper handlers for obstructing the sidewalk.

"Pierce's political pull is certainly working," observed Ellis, "but it's coa.r.s.e work."

Finer was to come. Two libel suits mushroomed into view in as many days, provoked, as it were, out of conscious nothing; unimportant but hara.s.sing: one, brought by a ne'er-do-well who had broken a leg while engaged in a drunken prank months before, the other the outcome of a paragraph on a little, semi-fraudulent charity.

"I'll bet that eminent legal light, Mr. William Douglas, could tell something about these," said Ellis, "though his name doesn't appeal on the papers."

"We'll print these, too,--and we'll tell the reason for them," said Hal.

But on this last point his a.s.sistant dissuaded him. The efficient argument was that it would look like whining, and the one thing which a newspaper must not do was to lament its own ill-treatment.

On top of the libel suits came a letter from the Midland National Bank, stating with perfect courtesy that, under its present organization, a complicated account like that of the "Clarion" was inconvenient to handle; wherefore the bank was reluctantly obliged to request its withdrawal.

"Bottling us up financially," remarked Ellis. "I expected this, before."

"There are other banks than the Midland that'll be glad of our business," replied Hal.

"Probably not."

"No? Then they're curious inst.i.tutions."

"There isn't one of 'em in which Elias M. Pierce isn't a controlling factor. Ask your father."

On the following day when Dr. Surtaine, who had been out of town for several days, dropped in at the office, Hal had a memorandum ready on the point. The old quack eased himself into a chair with his fine air of ample leisure, creating for himself a fragrant halo of cigar smoke.

"Well, Boyee." The tone was a mingling of warm affection and semi-humorous reproach. "You went and did it to Elias M., didn't you?"

"Yes, sir. We went and did it."

The Doctor shook his head, looking at the other through narrowing eyes.

"And it's worrying you. You're not looking right."

"Oh, I'm well enough: a little sleeplessness, that's all."

He did not deem it necessary to tell his father that upon his white nights the unforgettable face of Esme Elliot had gleamed persistently from out the darkness, banis.h.i.+ng rest.

"Suppose you let me do some of the worrying, Boyee."

"Haven't you enough troubles in your own business, Dad?" smiled Hal.

"Machinery, son. Automatic, at that. Runs itself and turns out the dollars, regular, for breakfast. Very different from the newspaper game."

"I _should_ like your advice."

"On the take-it-or-leave-it principle, I suppose," answered Dr.

Surtaine, with entire good humor. "In the Pierce matter you left it. How do you like the results?"

"Not very much."

Dr. Surtaine spread out upturned hands, in dumb, oracular ill.u.s.tration of his own sagacity.

"But I'd do the same thing over again if it came up for decision."

"That's exactly what you mustn't do, Hal. Banging around the shop like that, cracking people on the knuckles may give you a temporary feeling of power and importance" (Hal flushed boyishly), "but it don't pay. Now, if I get you out of this sc.r.a.pe, I want you to go more carefully."

"How are you going to get me out of it?"

"Square it with E.M. Pierce. He's a good friend of mine."

"Do you really like Mr. Pierce, Dad?"

"Hm! Ah--er--well, Boyee, as for that, that's another tail on a cat. In a business way, I meant."

"In a business way he's trying to be a pretty efficient enemy of mine.

How would you like it if he undertook to interfere with Certina?"

By perceptible inches Dr. Surtaine's chest rounded in slow expansion.

"Legislatures and government bureaus have tried that. They never got away with it yet. Elias Pierce is a pretty big man in this town, but I guess he knows enough to keep hands and tongue off me."

"If not off your line of business," amended Ellis. "Did you see his interview in the 'Telegram'?"

He tossed over a copy of the paper folded to a column wherein Mr.

Pierce, with more temper than tact, had possessed himself of his adversary's editorial text, "Heredity," and proceeded to perform a variant thereon.

"If this young whippersnapper," Mr. Pierce had said, "this fledgling thug of journalism, had stopped to think of the source of his unearned money, perhaps he wouldn't talk so glibly about heredity."

Thence the interview pursued a course of indirect reflection upon the matter and method of the patent medicine trade, as exemplified in Certina and its allied industries. The top b.u.t.ton of Dr. Surtaine's glossy morning coat, as he read, seemed in danger of flying off into infinite s.p.a.ce. His powerful hands opened and closed slowly. Leaning forward he reached for the telephone, but checked himself.

"Mr. Pierce seems to have let go both barrels at once," he said with a strong effort of control.

"Pretty little exhibition of temper, isn't it?" said Hal, smiling.

"Temper's expensive. Perhaps we'll teach Elias M. Pierce that lesson before we're through. You remember it, too, next time you start in on a muckraking jag."