When I reached the office I found that the city editor, Mr. Mitchell, had gone. The little mousy individual was at one of the parti-divisions of the wall desk, near Mr. Mitchell’s big one, diving into a mass of copy the while he scratched his ear or trifled with his pencil or jumped mousily about in his seat.
“Is Mr. Mitchell about?” I inquired.
“No,” replied the other briskly; “he never gets in much before four o’clock. Anything you want to know? I’m his assistant.”
He did not dare say “assistant city editor”; his superior would not have tolerated one.
“He sent me out to this place, but it’s only a vacant lot.”
“Did you look all around the neighborhood? Sometimes you can get news of these things in the neighborhood, you know, when you can’t get it right at the spot. I often do that.”
“Yes,” I answered. “I inquired all about there.”
“It would be just like Tobe to send you out there, though,” he went on feverishly and timidly, “just to break you in. He does things like that. You’re the new man from Chicago, aren’t you—Dreiser?”
“Yes, but how did you know?”
“He said you were coming,” he replied, jerking his left thumb over his shoulder. “My name’s Hartung, Hugh Keller Hartung.”
He was so respectful, almost fearsome in his references to his superior that I could not help smiling. Now that I had my bearings, I did not feel so keenly about Mr. Mitchell. He seemed dull.
“I suppose you’ll find St. Louis a little slower than Chicago,” he went on, “but we have some of the biggest newspaper stories here you ever saw. You remember the Preller Trunk Mystery, don’t you, and that big Missouri-Pacific train robbery last year?”
I recalled both distinctly. “Is that so?” I commented, thinking of my career in Chicago and hoping for a duplication of it here.
Heavy steps were heard in the hall just outside, and Mr. Hartung jumped to his work like a frightened mouse; on the instant his head was fairly pulled down between his shoulders and his nose pressed over his work. He seemed to shrivel and shrink, and I wondered why. I went into the next room just as Mr. Tobias Mitchell entered. When I explained that the address he had given me was a vacant lot he merely looked up at me quizzically, suspiciously.
“Couldn’t find it, eh? Somebody must have given me the wrong tip. Wait in the next room. I’ll call you when I want you.”
I returned to that empty room, from which I could hear the industrious pencil of Mr. Hartung and the occasional throat-clearing cough of Mr. Mitchell brooding among his papers.
CHAPTER XVII
This reporters’ room, for all its handsome furnishings, never took on an agreeable atmosphere to me; it was too gloomy—and solely because of the personality next door. The room was empty when I entered, but in a short while an old drunken railroad reporter with a red nose came in and sat down in a corner seat, taking no notice of me. I read the morning paper and waited. The room gradually filled up, and all went at once to their desks and began to write industriously. I felt very much out of tune; a reporter’s duty at this hour of the night was to write.
However, I made the best of my time reading, and finally went out to supper alone, returning as quickly as possible in case there should be an assignment for me. When I returned I found my name on the book and I set out to interview a Chicago minister who was visiting in the city. Evidently this city editor thought it would be easier for me to interview a Chicago minister than any other. I found my man, after some knocking at wrong doors, and got nothing worth a stick—mere religious drive—and returned with my “story,” which was never used.
While I was writing it up, however, the youth of the Jovian curls returned from an assignment, hung up his little wrinkled overcoat and sat down in great comfort next me. His evening’s work was apparently futile for he took out his pipe, rapped it sonorously on his chair, lighted it and then picked up an evening paper.
“What’s doing, Jock, up at police headquarters?” called the little man over his shoulder.
“Nothing much, Bob,” replied the other, without looking up.
“By jing, you police reporters have a cinch!” jested the first. “All you do is sit around up there at headquarters and get the news off the police blotters, while we poor devils are chasing all over town. We have to earn our money.” His voice had a peculiarly healthy, gay and bantering ring to it.
“That’s no joke,” put in a long, lean, spectacled individual who was sitting in another corner. “I’ve been tramping all over south St. Louis, looking for a confounded robbery story.”
“Well, you’ve got long legs, Benson,” retorted the jovial Hazard. “You can stand it. Now I’m not so well fixed that way. Bellairs, there, ought to be given a chance at that. He wouldn’t be getting so fat, by jing!”
The one called Jock also answered to the name of Bellairs.
“You people don’t do so much,” he replied, grinning cheerfully. “If you had my job you wouldn’t be sitting here reading a newspaper. It takes work to be a police reporter.”
“Is that so?” queried the little man banteringly. “You’re proof of it, I suppose? Why, you never did a good day’s work in your life!”
“Give us a match, Bob, and shut up,” grinned the other. “You’re too noisy. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me yet tonight.”
“I got your work! Is she over sixteen? Wish I had your job.”
Jock folded up some copy paper and put it into his pocket and walked into the next room, where the little assistant was toiling away over the night’s grist of news.
I still sat there, looking curiously on.
“It’s pretty tough,” said the spirited Hazard, turning to me, “to go out on an assignment and then get nothing. I’d rather work hard over a good story any day, wouldn’t you?”
“That’s the way I feel about it,” I replied. “It’s not much fun, sitting around. By the way, do you know whose desk this is? I’ve been sitting at it all evening.”
“It doesn’t belong to anybody at present. You might as well take it if you like it. There’s a vacant one over there next to Benson’s, if you like that better.” He waved toward the tall awkward scribe in the corner.
“This is good enough,” I replied.
“Take your choice. There’s no trouble about desks just now. The staff’s way down anyhow. You’re a stranger here, aren’t you?”
“Yes; I only came down from Chicago yesterday.”
“What paper’d jeh work on up there?”
“The Globe and News,” I answered, lying about the latter in order to give myself a better standing than otherwise I might have.
“They’re good papers, aren’t they?”
“Yes, pretty fair. The News has the largest evening circulation.”
“We have some good papers here too. This is one of the biggest. The Post-Dispatch is pretty good too; it’s the biggest evening paper.”
“Do you know how much circulation this paper has?” I inquired.
“Oh, about fifty thousand, I should say. That’s not so much, compared to Chicago circulation, but it’s pretty big for down here. We have the biggest circulation of any paper in the Southwest. McCullagh’s one of the greatest editors in this country, outside of Dana in New York, the greatest of any. If McCullagh were in New York he’d be bigger than he is, by jing!”
“Do you run many big news stories?”
“Sometimes; not often. The Globe goes very light on local news. They play up the telegraph on this paper because we go into Texas and Arkansas and Louisiana and all these other States around here. We use $400,000 worth of telegraph news here every year,” and he said it as though he were part owner of the paper. I liked him very much.
I opened my eyes at this news and thought dubiously of it in relation to my own work. It did not promise much for a big feature, on which I might spread myself.
We talked on, becoming more and more friendly. In spite of the city editor, whom I did not like, I now began to like this place, although I could feel that these men were more or less browbeaten, held down and frozen. The room was much too quiet for a healthy Western reportorial room, the atmosphere too chill.
We talked of St. Louis, its size (450,000), its principal hotels, the Southern, the Lindell and the La Clede (I learned that its oldest and best, the Planter, had recently been torn down and was going to be rebuilt some day), what were the chief lines of news. It seemed that fires, murders, defalcations, scandals were here as elsewhere the great things, far over-shadowing most things of national and international import. Recently a tremendous defalcation had occurred, and this new acquaintance of mine had been working on it, had “handled it alone,” as he said. Like all citizens of an American city he was pro-St. Louis, anxious to say a good word for it. The finest portion of it, he told me, was in the west end. I should see the wonderful new residences and places. There was a great park here, Forrest, over fourteen hundred acres in size, a wonderful thing. A new bridge was building in north St. Louis and would soon be completed, one that would relieve traffic on the Eads Bridge and help St. Louis to grow. There was a small city over the river in Illinois, East St. Louis, and a great Terminal Railroad Association which controlled all the local railroad facilities and taxed each trunk line six dollars a car to enter and each passenger twenty-five cents. “It’s a great graft and a damned shame, but what can you do?” was his comment. Traffic on the Mississippi was not so much now, owing to the railroads that paralleled it, but still it was interesting.
The already familiar noise of a roll-top desk broke in upon us from the next room, and I noticed a hush fall on the room. What an atmosphere! I thought. After a few moments of silence my new friend turned to me and whispered very softly:
“That’s Tobe Mitchell, the city editor, coming in. He’s a proper ——, as you’ll find.” He smiled wisely and began scribbling again.
“He didn’t look so pleasant to me,” I replied as softly.
“I’ve quit here twice,” he whispered. “The next time I go I won’t come back. I don’t have to stay here, and he knows it. I can get a job any day on the Chronicle, and wouldn’t have to work so hard either. That’s an evening paper. I stay here because I like a morning paper better, that’s all. There’s more to it. Everything’s so scrappy and kicked together on an evening paper. But he doesn’t say much to me any more, although he doesn’t like me. You’d think we were a lot of kids, and this place a schoolroom.” He frowned.
We dropped into silence again. I did not like this thought of difficulty thrust upon me. What a pity a man like McEnnis was not here!
“He doesn’t look like much of a newspaper man to me,” I observed.
“And he isn’t either. McCullagh has him here because he saved his life once in a fight somewhere, down in Texas, I think—or that’s what they tell me.”
We sat and read; the sound of city life below had died out and one could hear the scratching of reporters’ pens. Assignments were written up and turned in, and then the reporters idled about, dangling their legs from spring-back chairs, smoking pipes and whispering. As the clock registered eleven-thirty the round body of Mitchell appeared in the doorway, his fair-tinted visage darkened by a faint scowl.
“You boys can go now,” he pronounced solemnly.
All arose, I among them, and went to a closet where were our hats and overcoats. I was tired, and this atmosphere had depressed me. What a life! Had I come down here for this? The thought of the small news end which the local life received depressed me also. I could not see how I was to make out.
I went down to a rear elevator, the only one running at this time of night, and came out into the dark street, where a carriage was waiting. I assumed that this must be for the famous editor. It looked so comfortable and sedate, waiting at the door in the darkness for an editor who, as I later learned, might not choose to leave until two. I went on to my little room at the hotel, filled with ideas of how, some day, I should be a great editor and have a carriage waiting for me. Yes; I felt that I was destined for a great end. For the present I must be content to look around for a modest room where I could sleep and bide my time and opportunity.
CHAPTER XVIII
I found a room the next morning in Pine Street, only a few doors from this hotel and a block from my new office. It was a hall bedroom, one of a long series which I was to occupy, dirty and grimy. I recall it still with a sickening sense of its ugliness; and yet its cheapness and griminess did not then trouble me so much. Did I not have the inestimable boon of youth and ambition, which make most material details unimportant? Some drab of a woman rented it to me, and outside were those red, yellow, blue, green and orange street-cars clanging and roaring and wheezing by all night long. Inside were four narrow gray walls, a small wooden bed, none too clean sheets and pillow-cases, a yellow washstand. I brought over my bag, arranged the few things I thought need not be kept under lock and key, and returned to the streets. I need not bother about the office until twelve-thirty, when the assignments were handed out—or “the book,” as Hartung reverently called it, was laid out for our inspection.
And now, spread before me for my survey and entertainment was the great city of St. Louis, and life itself as it was manifesting itself to me through this city. This was the most important and interesting thing to me, not my new position. Work? Well, that was important enough, considering the difficulty I had had in securing it. What was more, I was always driven by the haunting fear of losing this or any other position I had ever had, of not being able to find another (a left-over fear, perhaps, due to the impression that poverty had made on me in my extreme youth). Just the same, the city came first in my imagination and desires, and I now began to examine it with care, its principal streets, shops, hotels, its residence district. What a pleasure to walk about, to stare, to dream of better days and great things to come.
Just at this time St. Louis seemed to be upon the verge of change and improvement. An old section of mansions bordering on the business center was rapidly giving way to a rabble of small stores and cheap factories. Already several new buildings of the Chicago style of skyscraper were either contemplated or in process of construction. There was a new club, the Mercantile, the largest in the city, composed entirely of merchants in the downtown section, which had just been opened and about which the papers were making a great stir. There was a new depot contracted for, one of the finest in all the country, so I was told, which was to house all the roads entering the city. A new city hall was being talked of, an enormous thing-to-be. Out in the west end, where progress seemed the most vital, were new streets and truly magnificent residence “places,” parked and guarded areas these, in which were ranged many residences of the ultra-rich. The first time I saw one of these places I was staggered by its exclusive air and the beauty and even grandeur of some of the great houses in it—newly manufactured exclusiveness. Here were great gray or white or brownstone affairs, bright, almost gaudy, with great verandas, astonishing doorways, flights of stone steps, heavily and richly draped windows, immense carriage-houses, parked and flowered lawns.
