Oh, well, said Van Cleef, good-naturedly, seeing that his companion was a little provoked at being thought easily imposed upon, I dare say its all right, and youll hear from him in some way or other.
As the friends thus talked they were walking rapidly toward the first of the many police-stations that Van Cleef was obliged to visit every night, for it wanted but a few minutes of ten oclock.
The plain brick building situated in the middle of a block and used as a police-station could be distinguished from the houses on either side of it at a long distance up or down the street by the two green lights on the edge of the sidewalk in front of it. Reaching it, the reporters ran up a short flight of steps, and entered a big square room, the silence of which was only broken by the ticking of a telegraph instrument in one corner. The room was brightly lighted and scrupulously clean. An officer in a sort of undress uniform, who is known as a door-man, whose business it is to take care of the station-house and of the cells beneath it, saluted Van Cleef as he entered. Returning the salute, the reporter stepped up to a stout railing that ran the whole length of the room at one side, and, addressing another officer, who sat at a big desk writing in an immense book, said:
Good-evening, sergeant.
Good-evening, Mr. Van Cleef.
Any thing going on to-night?
Nothing more than ordinary.
You dont mind my looking at the blotter?
Certainly not.
Hello! whats this drowning case? inquired Van Cleef, as he ran his eye down a page of the big book, on which were recorded the arrests or other important incidents reported by the officers of that station during the day.
That? Oh, thats nothing particular. It happened a couple of hours ago, and your head-quarters man has got all there is of it long before this.
Van Cleef asked no further questions, but, making a few notes of the case, he bade the sergeant good-night, and he and Myles left the station.
As they gained the street Van Cleef said:
Head-quarters may or may not have got hold of that case, and it may not amount to any thing anyway, but I think its worth looking up. So if you dont mind going a bit out of our way, we will see what we can find out about it.
What do you mean by head-quarters? asked Myles.
Why, all the large papers keep a man at the Police Head-quarters on Mulberry Street day and night, and he telegraphs all important police news from there to them, answered Van Cleef.
Away over to Tenth Avenue they went. There they hunted some time before they found the right number. Then through a narrow, intensely dark and vile-smelling alley, across a dirty court, and into a tall back tenement swarming with human beings, up flight after flight of filthy stairways they climbed to the very top of the house before they reached the room of which they were in search. Van Cleef knocked at the closed door, but, receiving no answer, he pushed it open and they entered.
A single flaring candle dimly lighted the scene. The room was so bare that a rude bedstead, a ruder table, two chairs, and a rusty stove constituted all its furniture. On the bed, still in its wet clothing, lay the body of the drowned man. It was little more than a skeleton, and the cheeks were white and hollow. Beside the bed, with her face buried in her hands, knelt a woman moaning, while from a corner two wretched children, huddled together on a pile of rags, stared at the visitors with big, frightened eyes.
As Van Cleef touched the kneeling woman on the shoulder and spoke to her, she ceased her moaning and lifted the most pitiful, haggard, and altogether hopeless face Myles Manning thought he had ever seen.
Go away! she cried, and leave me alone to die with him! O Jim, my Jim! why couldnt you take me with you? Why did you leave me, Jim Jim my Jim, the best husband that ever a woman had? Then she again buried her face, and again began her heart-rending moaning.
It was a long time before Van Cleef, using infinite patience, tact, and soothing words could learn her story. It was an old one of a husband and father broken down in health, thrown out of employment, too proud to seek public charity, and finally plunging into the river to escape the piteous cries of his starving little ones. He had gone out that evening to seek food, saying that he would either bring it or never come back alive. He knew that if he were dead his family would stand a better chance of being cared for than while he was living.
As Myles and Van Cleef left this place of sorrow and suffering, the latter slipped a dollar into the womans hand and promised further aid on the morrow. Myles, poor fellow, was so affected by what he saw that he would have given her his sole bit of wealth a five-dollar bill, but his companion restrained him.
They had to hurry through with the half-dozen police-stations and two hospitals remaining on their route to make up for lost time.
Trinity bells were chiming a quarter to one oclock as they reached the Phonograph office. The editorial rooms were ablaze with electric lights. Reporters and messenger-boys were dashing in and out. Men in their shirt-sleeves were writing or editing copy at the long desks. The whole scene was the one of breathless haste and well ordered confusion that always immediately precedes the going to press of a great daily.
Van Cleef made his report to the night city editor, and was ordered to write out his story in full. While he was doing this, Myles sat and watched him, wondering if he could possibly compose a readable description of what they had just seen amid such surroundings. At last Van Cleef finished, handed in his copy, and at half-past two oclock the two weary fellows turned into bed, Myles sharing his companions humble lodgings for the night.
CHAPTER IV.
BEGINNING A NEW LIFE
VAN CLEEF seemed to fall asleep at once, but the novel train of thought whirling through Myles brain rendered it impossible for him to follow this example immediately. As he lay, with wide-open eyes, recalling the incidents of the day it seemed incredible that he had seen, and learned, and gone through with what he had, all within the space of a few hours. Could it be that he had left home prepared to give up his college life only that morning? He must send them a long letter, for they would be so anxious to hear every thing that had happened to him. As he said this to himself his thoughts merged into dreams so gradually that he had no knowledge of where the one ended and the other began.
Wake up, old man, wake up! Here it is nine oclock Tuesday morning and the weeks work yet to be done.
It was Van Cleefs voice, and as Myles sprang to a sitting posture and rubbed his eyes he saw his friend standing beside the bed fully dressed and looking as bright as if sleep were something for which he had no need.
Yes, he said, in answer to Myles inquiring glance, I have been up and out for an hour, and Im sorry to say that I have bad news for you.
Myles expression at once became anxious. Had the city editor sent word that he had changed his mind and did not want him after all?
You see, continued Van Cleef, I was worried about that dress-suit business. So I just slipped out without waking you, and went up to old Johnnies to get it; but I was too late. He sold it last evening; and so there we are!
Then I suppose there is no use of my going down to the Phonograph office again, said Myles, trying to speak with a cheerfulness that he did not feel.
No use! exclaimed the other. Why, of course there is. You are under orders, you know, and must at least report for duty, whether you are wanted or not. The only thing is that you will have to tell Mr. Haxall.
No use! exclaimed the other. Why, of course there is. You are under orders, you know, and must at least report for duty, whether you are wanted or not. The only thing is that you will have to tell Mr. Haxall.
Yes, I suppose I must, answered Myles, soberly, as he began to dress, and then he will probably tell me that a dress-suit, and not Myles Manning, was what he engaged, and that without it he has no use for its late owner. I suppose I can stand it, though, as well as another, but it will be a disappointment.
Of course it will if it comes, replied Van Cleef, cheerfully; but I do not believe it will. At any rate there is no use making matters worse by worrying in advance; so lets brace up and go out for breakfast. Im as hungry as a boot-black. By the way, I spoke to my landlady this morning and find that she has a vacant hall-bedroom that you can have for three dollars a week if you want it. Its small, but its clean and airy, and this is a most respectable neighborhood. Above all, it is cheap, which is the main thing with me, and also, I take it, with you just at present.
Of course it is, answered Myles, and I shall be only too glad to be in the same house with you. You are almost the only friend I own now; at any rate, you are the most valuable one.
As he spoke Myles found himself wondering if this valued friend could be the same class dig with whom he had been barely on speaking terms only the morning before.
At a small but tidy restaurant near by, they obtained an excellent breakfast of coffee, rolls, and boiled eggs, for twenty-five cents apiece. Van Cleef apologized for this unusual extravagance, saying that he generally breakfasted on coffee and rolls alone for fifteen cents, but that this was an occasion.
In the restaurant they found copies of the morning papers, and Myles, paying no attention to those that he had been in the habit of reading, eagerly seized the Phonograph. Yes, there it was; a half-column account of the scene they had witnessed the night before in the Tenth Avenue tenement-house. How interesting it was! How well expressed, and what a pathetic picture it presented of that room and its occupants! As Myles finished reading the story he turned to his companion with honest admiration.
You are a regular out-and-out genius, Van! he exclaimed. If I could write a story like that and get it printed Id be too proud to speak to common folks, and Id expect to have my salary raised to the top notch at once.
Well, I fancy youd have to take it out in expecting, then, laughed the other. That may be a fair sort of a story, and I wont say that it isnt, but at the same time I doubt if any one besides yourself gives it a second thought. You wouldnt if youd been in the office a week or two and studied the other fellows work. Why, the very brightest men in the city are on the Phonograph, as you will soon discover. As for a raise of salary well, you will have to write many and many a story better than this little screed of mine before that happy event takes place.
Then mine will continue to be fifteen per week for the rest of my natural life, or, rather, for as long as they will let me hang on down there, Im afraid, sighed Myles.
Not a bit of it, my dear fellow. A year from now you will be way up, probably on space, and looking back with infinite pity upon yourself as a salary man at fifteen dollars a week. There is just one bit of advice, though, that, if you will let me, I should like ever so much to give you as a starter. It is, never refuse an assignment. No matter how hard or distasteful or insignificant the job promises to be, take it without a word and go through with it to the best of your ability without a murmur. Also, never hesitate to take hold of any piece of work offered you for fear you may not be capable of performing it. A reporter must be capable of any thing and must have the fullest confidence in himself. If the city editor says some fine morning, Mr. Manning, the Phonograph wishes to locate the North Pole; will you be kind enough to go and discover it? you must answer, Certainly, sir, and set off at once. Such an undertaking might prove expensive; but that is the city editors lookout, not yours. You are under orders exactly as though you were in the army, and your responsibility ends with obeying them to the letter. Now I must be off to recitation and you must be getting downtown. So good-bye, and good-luck to you. I shall probably see you again at the office this evening.
All the way downtown the wheels of the elevated train seemed to rattle out, Under orders, under orders, and Myles could think of nothing else.
How many people are under orders! he said to himself as he reflected that most of the best work of the world was accomplished by those who obeyed orders. Thus thinking he finally decided that he was proud of being under orders, and that if he could make a name in no other way he would at least gain a reputation for strict obedience to them. In reaching this conclusion he took a most important forward step, for in learning to obey orders one also learns how to give them.
Myles reached the office a few minutes before eleven oclock, and, walking boldly past the boys who guarded its entrance, bowing to, and receiving a pleasant good-morning from, Mr. Brown as he did so, he entered the city-room, as that portion of the editorial offices devoted to the use of reporters and news editors is called.
The great room was as clean, neat, and fresh as the office-boys, who had been at work upon it for the past hour, could make it. Every desk and chair was in its place, and not a scrap of paper littered the newly swept floor. In the corner farthest from the entrance, beside a large open window that overlooked the busy scene of Park Row, City Hall Park, and Broadway beyond it, sat the city editor before a handsome flat-topped desk. Other single desks occupied favorable positions beside other windows, but their chairs were vacant at this early hour. Down the middle of the floor ran two parallel rows of double desks, each containing a locked drawer and each supplied with pens, ink, writing-and blotting-paper. These were for the reporters. At one side was a long reading-shelf, beneath which hung files of all the city papers. At the back of the room was a row of lockers like those in a gymnasium, in which were, kept overcoats, hats, umbrellas, and other such articles belonging to the occupants of the office.
A dozen or more bright-looking, well-dressed young men sat or stood about the room chatting, reading the morning papers, or holding short consultations with the city editor. While talking with them he hardly looked up from the paper that he was glancing over with practised eyes, and occasionally clipping a paragraph from with a pair of long, slim shears. He took these papers from a pile lying on his desk that contained a copy of every morning daily published in New York, Brooklyn, or Jersey City. The little slips that he cut from them were laid by themselves at one end of his desk.
It was a pleasant room. Its very air was inspiring, and Myles wished he were sure of being permanently established as one of its occupants. But the thought of the confession he had to make, and of its probable results, weighed heavily on his mind. He was impatient to have it over with and to know the worst at once.
Walking straight up to the city editors desk he said:
Good-morning, Mr. Haxall. I
Ah, good-morning, Mr. Manning. Glad to see you so promptly on hand. If you will find a seat Ill have time to talk with you in a few minutes.
So Myles found a seat on a window-sill and amused himself by watching what was going on around him. He noticed that as each reporter entered the room he walked directly to a slate, that hung on the wall near the door, and read carefully a list of names written on it. He afterward found that this was a list of those for whom mail matter had come addressed to the office. Having received his letters from Mr. Brown, and taken one or more copies of the morning Phonograph from a pile on the janitors desk, each reporter occupied himself as he chose until summoned by Mr. Haxall and given an assignment.