Samuel Hopkins Adams - The Clarion

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"This'll be a shock to Mr. Pierce," said Ellis. "I'll break it
diplomatically to his secretary." And thus was the manner of the Celt's
diplomacy. "Hello,--Mr. Pierce's secretary?--Tell Mr. Pierce--get this
_verbatim_, please,--that Mr. Harrington Surtaine is busy at present,
but will try to find time to see him here--_here_, mind you, at the
'Clarion' office, at 4.30 this afternoon--What? Oh, yes; you understood,
all right. Don't be young.--What? Do _not_ sputter into the
'phone.--Just give him the message.--No; Mr. Surtaine will not speak
with you.--Nor with Mr. Pierce. He's busy.--_Good_-bye."

"Two hours leeway before the storm," said Hal. "Why deliberately stir
him up, Mac?"

"No one ever saw Pierce lose his temper. I've a curiosity in that
direction. Besides, he'll be easier to handle, mad. Do you know Pierce?"

"I've lunched with him, and been there to the house to dinner once or
twice. Wish I hadn't."

"Let me give you a little outline of him. Elias M. is the hard-shell New
England type. He was brought up in the fear of God and the Poor-House.
God was a good way off, I guess; but there stood the Poor-House on the
hill, where you couldn't help but see it. The way of salvation from it
was through the dollar. Elias M. worked hard for his first dollar, and
for his millionth. He's still working hard. He still finds the fear of
God useful: he puts it into everybody that goes up against his game. The
fear of the Poor-House is with him yet, though he doesn't realize it.
It's the mainspring of his religion. There's nothing so mean as fear;
and Elias M.'s fear is back of all his meanness, his despotism in
business, his tyranny as an employer. I tell you, Boss, if you ever saw
a hellion in a cutaway coat, Elias M. Pierce is it, and you're going to
smell sulphur when he gets here. Better let him do the talking, by the
way."

Prompt to the minute, Elias M. Pierce arrived. With him came William
Douglas, his personal counsel. Having risen to greet them, Hal stood
leaning against his desk, after they were seated. The lawyer disposed
himself on the far edge of his chair, as if fearing that a more
comfortable pose might commit him to something. Mr. Pierce sat solid and
square, a static force neatly buttoned into a creaseless suit. His face
was immobile, but under the heavy lids the eyes smouldered, dully. The
tone of his voice was lifelessly level: yet with an immanent menace.

"I do not make appointments outside my own office--" he began, looking
straight ahead of him.

Mindful of Ellis's advice, Hal stood silent, in an attitude of courteous
attention.

"But this is a case of saving time. My visit has to do with the accident
of which you know."

Whether or not Hal knew was undeterminable from sign or speech of his.

"It was wholly the injured woman's fault," pursued Mr. Pierce, and
turned a slow, challenging eye upon Hal.

Over his shoulder the editor-in-chief caught sight of McGuire Ellis
laying finger on lip, and following up this admonition by a gesture of
arms and hands as of one who pays out line to a fish. Douglas fidgeted
on his desperate edge.

"You sent a reporter to interview my daughter. He was impertinent. He
should be discharged."

Still Mr. Pierce was firing into silence. Something rattled and flopped
in a chute at his elbow. He turned, irritably. That Mr. Pierce's
attention should have been diverted even for a moment by this was
sufficient evidence that he was disconcerted by the immobility of the
foe. But his glance quickly reverted and with added weight. Heavily he
stared, then delivered his ultimatum.

"The 'Clarion' will print nothing about the accident."

The editor of the "Clarion" smiled. At sight of that smile some
demon-artist in faces blocked in with lightning swiftness parallel lines
of wrath at right angles to the corners of the Pierce mouth. Through the
lips shone a thin glint of white.

"You find me amusing?" Men had found Elias M. Pierce implacable,
formidable, inscrutable, even amenable, in some circumstances, with a
conscious and godlike condescension; but no opponent had ever smiled at
his commands as this stripling of journalism was doing.

Still there was no reply. In his chair McGuire Ellis leaned back with an
expression of beatitude. The lawyer, shrewd enough to understand that
his principal was being baited, now took a hand.

"You may rely on Mr. Pierce to have the woman suitably cared for."

Now the editorial smile turned upon William Douglas. It was gentle, but
unsatisfying.

"_And_ the reporter will be discharged at once," continued Elias M.
Pierce, exactly as if Douglas had not spoken at all.

"Mr. Ellis," said Hal, "will you 'phone Mr. Wayne to send up the man who
covered the Pierce story?"

The summoned reporter entered the room. He was a youth named Denton, one
year out of college, eager and high-spirited, an enthusiast of his
profession, loving it for its adventurousness and its sense of
responsibility and power. These are the qualities that make the real
newspaper man. They die soon, and that is why there are no good, old
reporters. Elias M. Pierce turned upon him like a ponderous machine of
vengeance.

"What have you to say for yourself?" he demanded.

Up under Denton's fair skin ran a flush of pink. "Who are you?" he
blurted.

"You are speaking to Mr. Elias M. Pierce," said Douglas hastily.

Six weeks before, young Denton would perhaps have moderated his attitude
in the interests of his job. But now through the sensitive organism of
the newspaper office had passed the new vigor; the feeling of
independence and of the higher responsibility to the facts of the news
only. The men believed that they would be upheld within their own rights
and those of the paper. Harrington Surtaine's standards had been not
only absorbed: they had been magnified and clarified by minds more
expert than his own. Subconsciously, Denton felt that his employer was
back of him, must be back of him in any question of professional honor.

"What I've got to say, I've said in writing."

"Show it to me." The insolence of the command was quite unconscious.

The reporter turned to Hal.

"Mr. Denton," said Hal, "did Miss Pierce explain why she didn't return
after running the nurse down?"

"She said she was in a hurry: that she had a train to catch."

"Did you ask her if she was exceeding the speed limit?"

"She was not," interjected Elias M. Pierce.

"She said she didn't know; that nobody ever paid any attention to speed
laws."

"What about her license?"

"I asked her and she said it was none of my business."

"Quite right," approved Mr. Pierce curtly.

"Tell the desk to run the interview _verbatim_, under a separate head.
Will the nurse die?"

Mr. Pierce snorted contemptuously. "Die! She's hardly hurt."

"Dislocated shoulder, two ribs broken, and scalp wounds. She'll get
well," said the reporter.

"Now, see here, Surtaine," said Douglas smoothly, "be reasonable. It
won't do the 'Clarion' any good to print a lot of yellow sensationalism
about this. There are half a dozen witnesses who say it was the nurse's
fault."

"We have evidence on the other side."

"From whom?"

"Max Veltman, of our composing-room."

"Veltman? Veltman?" repeated Elias M. Pierce, who possessed a wonderful
memory for men and events. "He's that anarchist fellow. Hates every man
with a dollar. Stirred up the labor troubles two years ago. I told my
men to smash his head if they ever caught him within two blocks of our
place."

"Speaking of anarchy," said McGuire Ellis softly.

"A prejudiced witness; one of your own employees," pointed out the
lawyer.

"I wouldn't believe him under oath," said Pierce.

"Perhaps you wouldn't believe me, either. I saw the whole thing myself,"
said Hal quietly.

"And you intend to print it?" demanded Pierce.

"It's news. The 'Clarion's' business is to print the news."

"Then there remains only to warn you," said Douglas, "that you will be
held to full liability for anything you may publish, civil _and_
criminal."

"Take that down, Mr. Denton," said Hal.

"I've got it," said the reporter.

"That isn't all." Elias M. Pierce rose and his eyes were wells of somber
fury. "You print that story--one word of it--and I'll smash your paper."

"Take that down, Mr. Denton." Hal's voice was even.

"I've got it," said Denton in the same tone.

"You don't know what I am in this city." Every word of the great man's
voice rang with the ruthless arrogance of his power. "I can make or mar
any man or any business. I've fought the demagogues of labor and driven
'em out of town. I've fought the demagogues of politics and killed them
off. And you think with your little spewing demagoguery of newspaper
filth, you can override me? You think because you've got your father's
quack millions behind you, that you can stand up to me?"

"Take that down, Mr. Denton."

"I've got it."

"Then take this, too," cried Elias M. Pierce, losing all control, under
the quiet remorselessness of this goading: "people like my daughter and
me aren't at the mercy of scum like you. We've got rights that aren't
responsible to every little petty law. By God, I've made and unmade
judges in this town: and I'll show you what the law can do before I'm
through with you. I'll gut your damned paper."

"Not missing anything, are you, Mr. Denton?"

"I've got it all."

Throughout, Douglas, with a strained face, had been plucking at his
principal's arm. Now Elias M. Pierce turned to him.

"Go to Judge Ransome," he said sharply, "and get an injunction against
the 'Clarion.'"

McGuire Ellis sauntered over. "I wouldn't," he drawled.

"I'm not asking your advice."

"And I'm not looking for gratitude. But just let me suggest this:
Ransome may be one of the judges you brag of owning. But if he grants an
injunction I'll advise Mr. Surtaine to publish a spread on the front
page, stating that we have the facts, that we're enjoined from printing
them at present, but that now or a year from now we'll tell the whole
story in every phase. With that hanging over him, I don't believe Judge
Ransome will care to issue any fake injunction."

"There's such a thing as contempt of court," warned Douglas.

"Making and unmaking judges, for example?" suggested Ellis.

"Just one final word to you." The Pierce face was thrust close to Hal's.
"You keep your hands off my daughter if you expect to live in this
town."

"My one regret for Miss Pierce is that she is your daughter," retorted
Hal. "You have given me the material for a leading editorial in
to-morrow's issue. I recommend you to buy the paper."

The other glared at him speechless.

"It will be called," said Hal, "'A Study in Heredity.' Good-day."

And he gave the retiring magnate a full view of his back as he sat down
to write it.

CHAPTER XVI

THE STRATEGIST

"Never write with a hot pen." Thus runs one of McGuire Ellis's golden
rules of journalism. Had his employer better comprehended, in those
early days, the Ellisonian philosophy, perhaps the "Heredity" editorial
might never have appeared. Now, as it lay before him in proof, it seemed
but the natural expression of a righteous wrath.

"Neither Kathleen Pierce nor her father can claim exemption or
consideration in this instance," Hal had written, in what he chose to
consider his most telling passage. "Were it the girl's first offense of
temerity, allowance might be made. But the city streets have long been
the more perilous because of her defiance of the rights of others. Here
she runs true to type. She is her father's own daughter. In the light of
his character and career, of his use of the bludgeon in business, of his
resort to foul means when fair would not serve, of his brutal disregard
of human rights in order that his own power might be enhanced, of his
ruthless and crushing tyranny, not alone toward his employees, but
toward all labor in its struggle for better conditions, we can but
regard the girl who left her victim crushed and senseless in the gutter
and sped on because, in the words of her own bravado, she 'had a train
to catch,' as a striking example of the influence of heredity. If the
law which she so contemptuously brushed aside is to be aborted by the
influence and position of her family, the precept will be a bitter and
dangerous one. Much arrant nonsense is vented concerning the
'class-hatred' stirred up by any criticism of the rich. One such
instance as the running-down of Miss Cleary bears within it far more
than the extremest demagoguery the potentialities of an unleashed hate.
It is a lesson in lawlessness."

Still in the afterglow of composition, Hal, tinkering lightly with the
proofs, felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Well, Boy-ee," said the voice of Dr. Surtaine.

"Hello, father," returned Hal. "Sit down. What's up?"

"I've just had a message from E.M. Pierce."

"Did you obey a royal command and go to his office?"

"No."

"Neither did I."

"With you it's different. You're a younger man. And Elias M. Pierce is
the most powerful--um--er--well, _as_ powerful as any man in
Worthington."

"Outside of this office, possibly."

"Don't you be foolish, Boy-ee. You can't fight him."

"Nor do I want to," said Hal, a little chilled, nevertheless, by the
gravity of the paternal tone. "But when he comes in here and dictates
what the 'Clarion' shall and shall not print--"

"About his own daughter."

"News, father. It's news."

"News is what you print. If you don't print it, it isn't news. Isn't
that right? Well, then!"

"Not quite. News is what happens. If no paper published this, it would
be current by word of mouth just the same. A hundred people saw it."

"Anyway, tone your article down, won't you, Boy-ee?"

"I'm afraid I can't, Dad."

"Of course you can. Here, let me see it."

McGuire Ellis looked up sharply, his face wrinkled into an anxious
query. It relaxed when Hal handed the editorial proof to the Doctor,
saying, "Look at this, instead."

Dr. Surtaine read slowly and carefully. "Do you know what you're doing?"
he said, replacing the strip of paper.

"I think so."

"That editorial will line up every important business man in Worthington
against you."

"I don't see why it should."

"Because they'll see that none of 'em are safe if a newspaper can do
that sort of thing. It's never been done here. The papers have always
respected men of position, and their business and their families, too.
Worthington won't stand for that sort of thing."

"It's true, isn't it?"

"All the more harm if it is," retorted Dr. Surtaine, thus codifying the
sum and essence of the outsider's creed of journalism. "Do you know what
they'll call you if you print that? They'll call you an anarchist."

"Will they?"

"Ask Ellis."

"Probably," agreed the journalist.

"Every friend and business associate of Pierce's will be down on you."

"The whole angry hive of capital and privilege," confirmed Ellis.

"You see," cried the pleader; "you can't print it. Publishing an article
about Kathleen Pierce will be bad enough, but it's nothing to what this
other roast would be. One would make Pierce hate you as long as he
lives. The other will make the whole Business Interests of the city your
enemy. How can you live without business?"

"Business isn't as rotten as that," averred Hal. "If it is, I'm going to
fight it."

"Fight business!" It was almost a groan. "Tell him, Ellis, what a
serious thing this is. You agree with me in that, don't you?"

"Entirely."

"And that the 'Clarion' can't afford to touch the thing at all? You're
with me there, too, aren't you?"

"Absolutely not."

"You're going to stand by and see my boy turn traitor to his class?"

"Damn his class," said McGuire Ellis, in mild, conversational tones.

"As much as you like," agreed the other, "in talk. But when it comes to
print, remember, it's our class that's got the money."

"Wouldn't it be a refreshing change," suggested Ellis, "to have one
paper in Worthington that money won't buy?"

"All very well, if you were strong enough." The wily old charlatan
shifted his ground. "Wait until you've built up to it. Then, when you've
got the public, you can afford to be independent."

"Get your price and then reform. Is that the idea, Father?" said Hal.

"Boy-ee, I don't know what's come over you lately. Journalism seems to
have got into your blood."

"Blame Ellis. He's been my preceptor."

"Both of you have got your lesson to learn."

"Well, I've learned one," asserted Hal: "that it's the business of a
newspaper to print the news."

"There's only one sound business principle, success. When it costs you
more to print a thing than not to print it, it's bad business to print
it."

"I'm sorry, Dad, but the 'Clarion' is going to carry this to-morrow."

"In case you're nervous about Mr. Pierce," put in McGuire Ellis with
Machiavellian innuendo, "I can pass it on to him that you're in no way
responsible for the 'Clarion's' policy."

"Me, afraid of Elias M. Pierce?" Our Leading Citizen's prickly vanity
was up in arms at once. "I'll match him or fight him dollar for dollar,
as long as my weasel-skin lasts. No, sir: if Hal's going to fight, I'll
stick by him as long as there's a dollar in the till."

"It's mighty good of you, Dad, and I know you'd do it. But I've made up
my mind to win out or lose out on the capital you gave me. And I won't
take a cent more."

"That's business, too, son. I like that. But I hate to see you lose. By
publishing your editorial you're committing your paper absolutely to a
policy, and a fatal one. Well, I won't argue any more. But I haven't
given up yet."

"Well, that's over," said Hal, as his father departed, gently smoothing
down his silk hat. "And I hope that ends it."

"Do you?" McGuire Ellis raised a tuneful baritone in song:--

'You may think you've got 'em going,' said the bar-keep to the bum.
'But cheer up
And beer up.
The worst is yet to come!'

"Unless my estimate of E.M. Pierce is wrong," he continued, "you'll
begin to hear from the other newspapers soon."

So it proved. Advertising managers called up and talked interminably
over the telephone. Editors-in-chief wrote polite notes. One fellow
proprietor called. By all the canons of editorial courtesy they exhorted
Mr. Surtaine to hold his hand from the contemplated sacrilege against
their friend and patron, Elias M. Pierce. Equally polite, Mr. Surtaine
replied that the "Clarion" would print the news. How much of the news
would he print? All the news, now and forever, one and inseparable, or
words to that effect. Painfully and protestingly the noble fellowship of
the free and untrammeled press pointed out that if the "Clarion"
insisted on informing the public, they too, in self-defense, must supply
something in the way of information to cover themselves, loth though
they were so to do. But the burden of sin and vengeance would rest upon
the paper which forced them into such a course. Still patient, Hal found
refuge in truism: to wit, that what his fellow editors chose to do was
wholly and specifically their business. From the corollary, he
courteously refrained.

Meantime, the object of Editor Surtaine's scathing had not been idle. To
the indignant journalist, Miss Kathleen Pierce had appeared a brutal and
hardened scion of wealth and injustice. This was hardly a just view.
Careless she was, and unmindful of standards; but not cruel. In this
instance, panic, not callousness, had been the mainspring of her
apparent cruelty. She was badly scared; and when her angry father told
her what she might expect at the hands of a "yellow newspaper," she
became still more badly scared. In this frame of mind she fled for
refuge to Miss Esme Elliot.

"I didn't mean to run over her," she wailed. "You know I didn't, Esme.
She ran out just like a m-m-mouse, and I felt the car hit her, and then
she was all crumpled up in the gutter. Oh, I was so frightened! I wanted
to go back, but I was afraid, and Phil began to cry and say we'd killed
her, and I lost my head and put on speed. I didn't mean to, Esme!"

"Of course you didn't, dear. Who says you did?"

"The newspaper is going to say so. That awful reporter! He caught me at
the station and asked me a lot of questions. I just shook my head and
wouldn't say a word," lied the frightened girl. "But they're going to
print an awful interview with me, father says. He's furious at me."

"In what paper, Kathie?"

"The 'Clarion.' Father says the other papers won't publish anything
about it, but he can't stop the 'Clarion.'"

"I can," said Miss Esme Elliot confidently.

The heiress to the Pierce millions lifted her woe-begone face. "You?"
she cried incredulously. "How?"

"I've got a pull," said Esme, dimpling.

A light broke in upon her suppliant. "Of course! Hal Surtaine! But
father has been to see him and he won't promise a thing. I don't see
what he's got against me."

"Don't worry, dear. Perhaps your father doesn't understand how to go
about it."

"No," said the other thoughtfully. "Father would try to bully and
threaten. He tried to bully me!" Miss Pierce stamped a well-shod foot in
memory of her manifold wrongs. Then feminine curiosity interposed a
check. "Esme! Are you engaged to Hal Surtaine?"

"No, indeed!" The girl's laughter rang silvery and true.

"Are you going to be?"

"I'm not going to be engaged to anybody. Not for a long time, anyway.
Life is too good as it is."

"Is he in love with you?" persisted Kathleen.

Esme lifted up a very clear and sweet mezzo-soprano in a mocking lilt of
song:--

"How should my heart know
What love may be?"

The visitor regarded her admiringly. "Of course he is. What man wouldn't
be! And you've seen a lot of him lately, haven't you?"

"I'm helping him run his paper--with good advice."

"Oh-h-h!" Miss Pierce's soft mouth and big eyes formed three circles.
"And you're going to advise him--"

"I'm going to advise him ver-ree earnestly not to say a word about you
in the paper, if you'll promise never, never to do it again."

The other clasped her in a bear-hug. "You duck! I'll just crawl through
the streets after this. You watch me! The police will have to call time
on me to make sure I'm not obstructing the traffic. But, Esme--"

"Well?"

Kathleen caught her hand and snuggled it up to her childishly. "How
often do you see Hal Surtaine?"

"You ought to know. There's something going on every evening now. And he
goes everywhere."

"Yes: but outside of that?"

Esme laughed. "How hard you're working to make a romance that isn't
there. I go to his office once in a while, just to see the wheels go
'round."

"And are you going to the office now?"

"No," said Esme, after consideration. "Hal Surtaine is coming here. This
evening."

"You have an appointment with him?"

"Not yet. I'll telephone him."

"Father telephoned him, but he wouldn't come to see father. So father
had to go to see him."

"Mahomet! Well, I'm the mountain in this case. Go in peace, my child."
Esme patted the other's head with an absurd and delightful affectation
of maternalism. "And look in the 'Clarion' to-morrow with a clear
assurance. You shan't find your name there--unless in the Social Doings
column. Good-bye, dear."

Having thus engaged her honor, the advisor to the editor sat her down to
plan. At the conclusion of a period of silent thought, she sent a
telephone message which made the heart of young Mr. Surtaine accelerate
its pace perceptibly. Was he too busy to come up to Greenvale, Dr.
Elliot's place, at 8.30 sharp?

Busy he certainly was, but not too busy to obey any behest of his
partner.

That was very nice of him. It would take but a few minutes.

As many minutes as she could use, she might have, or hours.

Then he was to consider himself gratefully thanked and profoundly
curtsied to, over the wire. By the way, if he had a galley proof of
anything that had been written about Kathleen Pierce's motor accident,
would he bring that along? And didn't he think it quite professional of
her to remember all about galleys and things?

Highly professional and clever (albeit in a somewhat altered tone, not
unnoted by the acute listener). Yes, he would bring the proof. At 8.30,
then, sharp.

"The new boss of our new boss," Wayne had styled the charming
interloper, on the occasion of her first visit to the "Clarion" office.
Had she heard, Esme would have approved. More, she would have believed,
though not without misgivings. Well she knew that she had not yet proved
her power over her partner. Many and various as were the men upon whom,
in the assay of her golden charm, she had exercised the arts of
coquetry, this test was on a larger scale. This was the potential
conquest of an institution. Could she make a newspaper change its hue,
as she could make men change color, with the power of a word or the
incitement of a glance? The very dubiety of the issue gave a new zest to
the game.

Behold, now, Miss Esme Elliot, snarer of men's eyes and hearts,
sharpening her wits and weapons for the fray; aye, even preparing her
pitfall. Cunningly she made a bower of one end of the broad living-room
at Greenvale with great sprays of apple blossoms from the orchard,
ravishing untold spoilage of her mother and forerunner, Eve, for the
bedecking of the quiet, cozy nook. Pink was ever her color; the hue of
the flushing of spring, of the rising blood in the cheek of maidenhood,
and the tenderest of the fruit-blooms was not more downy-soft of tint
than the face it bent to brush. At the close of the task, a heavy voice
startled her.

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