“No it’s not,” I replied truculently, “and I won’t do it, that’s all. It’s all right about Dick and Peter—I know what they’ll do for me if the paper will let them, but I know the paper won’t let them, and besides, you’re not going to be able to claim in the morning that this man was brought to the Globe first. I know you. Don’t begin to try to put anything over on me, because I won’t stand for it, see? And if these people do it anyhow I’ll make a kick at headquarters, that’s all.”
For a moment he appeared to be quieted by this and to decide to abandon his project, but later he took it up again, seemingly in the most conciliatory spirit in the world. At the same time, and from now on, he kept boring me with his eyes, a thing which I had never known him to do before. He was always too hang-dog in looking at me; but now of a sudden there was something bold and friendly as well as tolerant and cynical in his gaze.
“Aw, come on,” he argued. He was amazingly aggressive. “What’s the use being small about it? The Globe’s nearer. Think what a fine picture it’ll make. If you don’t we’ll have to go clear to the office and send an artist down to the jail. You can’t take any good pictures down there tonight.”
“Cut it,” I replied. “I won’t do it, that’s all,” but even as he talked a strange feeling of uncertainty or confusion began to creep over me. For the first time since knowing him, in spite of all my opposition of this afternoon and before, I found myself not quite hating him but feeling as though he weren’t such an utterly bad sort after all. What was so wrong about this Globe idea anyhow, I began suddenly to ask myself, in the most insane and yet dreamy way imaginable. Why wouldn’t it be all right to do that? Inwardly or downwardly, or somewhere within me, something was telling me that it was all wrong and that I was making a big mistake even to think about it. I felt half asleep or surrounded by clouds which made everything he said seem all right. Still, I wasn’t asleep, and now I didn’t believe a word he said, but——
“To the Globe, sure,” I found myself saying to myself in spite of myself, in a dumb, half-numb way. “That wouldn’t be so bad. It’s nearer. What’s wrong with that? Dick or Peter will make a good picture, and then I can take it along,” only at the same time I was also thinking, “I shouldn’t really do that. He’ll claim the credit for having brought this man to the Globe office. I’ll be making a big mistake. The Republic or nothing. Let him come down to the Republic.”
In the meantime we were entering St. Louis and the station. By then, somehow, he had not only convinced the sheriff and the other officers, but the prisoner. They liked him and were willing to do what he said. I could even see the rural love of show and parade gleaming in the eyes of the sheriff and the two detectives. Plainly, the office of the Globe was the great place in their estimation for such an exhibition. At the same time, between looking at me and the prisoner and the officers, he had knitted a fine mental net from which I seemed unable to escape. Even as I rose with these others to leave the train I cried: “No, I won’t come in on this! It’s all right if you want to bring him down to the Republic, or you can take him to the Four Courts, but I’m not going to let you get away with this. You hear now, don’t you?” But then it was too late.
Once outside, Galvin laid hold of my arm in an amazingly genial fashion and hung on it. In spite of me, he seemed to be master of the situation and to realize it. Once more he began to plead, and getting in front of me he seemed to do his best to keep my optical attention. From that point on and from that day to this, I have never been able to explain to myself what did happen. All at once, and much more clearly than before, I seemed to see that his plan in regard to the Globe was the best. It would save time, and besides, he kept repeating in an almost sing-song way that we would go first to the Globe and then to the Republic. “You come up with me to the Globe, and then I’ll go down with you to the Republic,” he kept saying. “We’ll just let Wood or McCord take one picture, and then we’ll all go down to your place—see?”
Although I didn’t see I went. For the time, nothing seemed important. If he had stayed by me I think he could have prevented my writing any story at all. As it was he was so eager to achieve this splendid triumph of introducing the celebrated bandit into the editorial rooms of the Globe first and there having him photographed and introduced to my old chief, that he hailed a carriage, and, the six of us crowding into it, we were bustled off in a trice to the door of the Globe, where, once I reached it, and seeing him and the detectives and the bandit hurrying across the sidewalk, I suddenly awoke to the asininity of it all.
“Wait!” I called. “Say, hold on! Cut this! I won’t do it! I don’t agree to this!” but it was too late. In a trice the prisoner and the rest of them were up the two or three low steps of the main entrance and into the hall, and I was left outside to meditate on the insanity of the thing I had done.
“Great God!” I suddenly exclaimed to myself. “What have I let that fellow do to me? I’ve been hypnotized, that’s what it is! I’ve allowed him to take a prisoner whom I had in my own hands at one time into the office of our great rival to be photographed! He’s put it all over me on this job—and I had him beaten! I had him where I could have shoved him off the train—and now I let him do this to me, and tomorrow there’ll be a long editorial in the Globe telling how this fellow was brought there first and photographed, and his picture to prove it!” I swore and groaned for blocks as I walked towards the Republic, wondering what I should do.
Distinct as was my failure, it was so easy, even when practically admitting the whole truth, to make it seem as though the police had deliberately worked against the Republic. I did not even have to do that but merely recited my protests, without admitting or insisting upon hypnotism, which Wandell would not have believed anyhow. On the instant he burst into a great rage against the police department, seeing apparently no fault in anything I had done, and vowing vengeance. They were always doing this; they did it to the Republic when he was on the Globe. Wait—he would get even with them yet! Rushing a photographer to the jail, he had various pictures made, all of which appeared with my story, but to no purpose. The Globe had us beaten. Although I had slaved over the text, given it the finest turns I could, still there on the front page of the Globe was a large picture of the bandit, seated in the sanctum sanctorum of the great G-D, a portion of the figure, although not the head, of its great chief standing in the background, and over it all, in extra large type, the caption:
“LONE TRAIN ROBBER VISITS OFFICE OF GLOBE
TO PAY HIS RESPECTS”
and underneath in italics a full account of how he had willingly and gladly come there.
I suffered tortures, not only for days but for weeks and months, absolute tortures. Whenever I thought of Galvin I wanted to kill him. To think, I said to myself, that I had thought of the two trains and then run across the meadow and paid the agent for stopping the train, which permitted Galvin to see the burglar at all, and then to be done in this way! And, what was worse, he was so gayly and cynically conscious of having done me. When we met on the street one day, his lip curled with the old undying hatred and contempt.
“These swell reporters!” he sneered. “These high-priced ink-slingers! Say, who got the best of the train robber story, eh?”
And I replied——
But never mind what I replied. No publisher would print it.
CHAPTER XLVII
Things like these taught me not to depend too utterly on my own skill. I might propose and believe, but there were things above my planning or powers, and creatures I might choose to despise were not so helpless after all. It fixed my thoughts permanently on the weakness of the human mind as a directing organ. One might think till doomsday in terms of human ideas, but apparently over and above ideas there were forces which superseded or controlled them.... My own fine contemptuous ideas might be superseded or set at naught by the raw animal or psychic force of a man like Galvin.
During the next few months a number of things happened which seemed to broaden my horizon considerably. For one thing, my trip to Chicago having revived interest in me in the minds of a number of newspaper men there, and having seemingly convinced them of my success here, I was bombarded with letters from one and another wanting to know whether or not they could obtain work here and whether I could and would aid them. At the close of the Fair in Chicago in October hard times were expected in newspaper circles there, so many men being released from work. I had letters from at least four, one of whom was a hanger-on by the name of Michaelson, of whom more anon, who had attached himself to me largely because I was the stronger and he expected aid of me. I have often thought how frequently this has happened to me—one of my typical experiences, as it is of every one who begins to get along. It is so much easier for the strong to tolerate the weak than the strong. Strength craves sycophancy. We want only those who will swing the censer before our ambitions and desires. Michaelson, or “Mich,” was a poor hack who had been connected with a commercial agency where daily reports had to be written out as to the financial and social condition of John Smith the butcher, or George Jones the baker. This led Mich, who was a farm-boy to begin with, to imagine that he could write and that he would like to run a country paper, only he thought to get some experience in the city first. By some process, of which I forget the steps, he fixed on me; and through myself and McEnnis, who was then so friendly to me, had secured a tryout on the Globe in Chicago. After I left McEnnis quickly tired of him, and I heard of him next as working for the City Press, an organization which served all newspapers, and paid next to nothing. Next I heard that he was married (having succeeded so well!), and still later he began to bombard me with pleas for aid in getting a place in St. Louis. Also there were letters from much better men: H. L. Dunlap, afterwards chief press advisor of President Taft; an excellent reporter by the name of Brady, whom I have previously mentioned; and a little later, John Maxwell.
Meanwhile, in spite of my great failure in connection with Galvin, my standing with Wandell seemed to rise rather than sink. Believe it or no, I became a privileged character about this institution or its city room, a singular thing in the newspaper profession. Because of specials I was constantly writing for the Sunday paper, I was taken up by the sporting editor, who wanted my occasional help in his work; the dramatic editor, who wanted my help on his dramatic page, asking me to see plays from time to time; and the managing editor himself, a small, courteous, soft-spoken, red-headed man from Kansas City, who began to invite me to lunch or dinner and talk to me as though I knew much (or ought to) about the world he represented. I was so unfitted for all this intellectually, my hour of stability and feeling for organization and control having not yet arrived, that I scarcely knew how to manage it. I was nervous, shy, poorly spoken, at least in their presence, while inwardly I was blazing with ambition, vanity and self-confidence. I wanted nothing so much as to be alone with my own desires and labors even though I believed all the while that I did not and that I was lonely and neglected!
Unsophisticated as I really was, I began to see Wandell as but a minor figure in this journalistic world, or but one of many, likely to be here and gone tomorrow, and I swaggered about, taking liberties which months before I should never have dreamed of taking. He talked to me too freely and showed me that he relied on my advice and judgment and admired my work. All out-of-town assignments of any importance were given to me. Occasionally at seven in the evening he would say that he would buy me a drink if I would wait a minute, a not very wise thing to do. Later, after completing one big assignment or another, I would stroll out of the office at, say, eight-thirty or nine without a word or a by-your-leave, and so respectful had he become that instead of calling me down in person he began writing me monitory letters, couched in the most diplomatic language but insisting that I abide by the rules which governed other reporters. But by now I had grown so in my own estimation that I smiled confidently, knowing very well that he would not fire me; my salary was too small. Besides, I knew that he really needed me or some one like me and I saw no immediate rival anywhere, one who would work as hard and for as little. Still I would reform for a time, or would plead that the managing or the dramatic editor had asked me to do thus and so.
“To hell with the managing editor!” he one day exclaimed in a rage. “This is my department. If he wants you to sit around with him let him come to me, or else you first see that you have my consent.”
At the same time he remained most friendly and would sit and chat over proposed stories, getting my advice as to how to do them, and as one man after another left him or he wanted to enlarge his staff he would ask me if I knew any one who would make a satisfactory addition. Having had these appeals from Dunlap, Brady and several others still in Chicago, I named first Dunlap (because I felt so sure of his merit), and then these others. To my surprise, he had me write Dunlap to come to work, and when he came and made good, Wandell asked me to bring still others to him. This flattered me very much. I felt myself becoming a power. The result was that after a time five men, three from Chicago and two from other papers in St. Louis, were transferred to the staff of the Republic by reason of my recommendation, and that with full knowledge of the fact that I was the one to whom they owed their opportunity. You may imagine the airs which I assumed.
About this time still another thing occurred which lifted me still more in my own esteem. Strolling into the Southern Hotel one evening I chanced to see my old chief, McCullagh, sitting as was his custom near one of the pillars of the lobby reading his evening paper. It had always been such a pleasing and homelike thing in my days at the Globe to walk into the lobby around dinner time and see this great chief in his low shoes and white socks sitting and reading here as though he were in his own home. It took away a bit of the loneliness of the city for me for he appeared to have no other home than this and he was my chief. And now, for the first time since I had so ignominiously retired from the Globe, I saw him as before, smoking and reading. Hitherto I had carefully avoided this and every other place at such hours as I was likely to encounter him. But now I had grown so conceited that I was not quite so much afraid of him; he was still wonderful to me but I was beginning to feel that I had a future of my own and that I could achieve it, regardless perhaps of the error that had so pained me then. Still I felt to the full all that old allegiance, respect and affection which had dominated me while I was on the Globe. He was my big editor, my chief, and there was none other like him anywhere for me, and there never was afterward. Nearing the newsstand, for which I made at sight of him in the hope that I should escape unseen, I saw him get up and come forward, perhaps to secure a cigar or another paper. I flushed guiltily and looked wildly about for some place to hide. It was not to be.
