“Try the cabinet there. What do you want of ’em?”
Galpin found the documents, and turned upon Jeremy.
“Boss, this man’s town had gone batty. Plumb bugs! Hopeless case.”
“You know what happens to a man who discovers that everybody else is crazy, Andy.”
“It’s gone completely nuts over The Guardian,” pursued the other, ignoring the intimation. “We’re a hobby. An obsession. A fad! A fashion! A killing! A—”
“What’s got you, Andy?” asked the editor anxiously. “Come down to earth.”
“Can’t! I’m a balloon. Watch me soar!” The usually stolid manager performed a bacchanalian fling. “Contracts!” he panted. “Reams of ’em! Money! Gobs of it! Circulation! Going uh-uh-up! Whee!”
“Andy, I’m not feeling very husky; but in a moment I shall throw you down and sit on your neck.”
“Can’t be done! I could lick the Kaiser and all his Botches single-handed. Boss, the luck has broke! The town is coming our way.”
“How? Why? What’s happened?”
“I’d like to tell you, but I haven’t got time. They’re waiting for me downstairs.”
“Who?”
“Advertisers. Waiting to break into The Guardian. They’re lined up in the hallways. I’ll have to issue rain-checks.”
“Stop talking like a lunatic, Andy, and explain.”
The demented manager perched upon the corner of the editorial table, with an effect of being poised for instant flight.
“Don’t ask me to explain, because I can’t. I tell you the advertisers of this town have suddenly got a mania—and we’re the mania. It began two days ago and it’s been growing worse right along. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to break through to the office this morning. They waylaid me on the way down. I don’t know who began it. I think it was Stormont, of Stormont & Lehn. He fell out of a doorway on me, and when I got loose there was a thousand-dollar advertising contract stuck down my collar. Then old Pussy-foot Ellison came sobbing up the street—”
“What the devil—”
“Don’t interrupt me or I’ll bust! And never mind my metaphors. It comes easier that way. Well, he blubbered out his sweet message of intending to double his space in the paper instead of cutting us out; and before I’d got his tears fairly brushed off my shoulder, Vogt, the Botch, rushed in, threw his arms round my neck and tried to kiss me, and handed me an eight-hundred-dollar-space order in lieu of damages; and asked whether we wouldn’t like flowers sent round mornings, gratis! Boss, I can just see you writing an editorial with one of Vogt’s tea-roses stuck coyly behind your ear—”
“Never mind my ear. Go on!”
“How can I remember who mobbed me! I do recall that Arndt, of the furniture shop, knocked me down and dragged me into an alley; and when I came to there was a signed agreement to restore all the space they lifted from us, and twenty-five per cent over and above. And, by the way, I saw the Governor hiking into Bausch’s office and looking about as cheerful as a banshee with a bellyache. Oh, there’s big doings of some kind, you bet! All the morning the ’phone has been buzzing and—Who’s that having hysterics in the hall?”
He threw open the door, and Mr. Adolph Ahrens, of The Great Northwestern Stores, bounded in, uttering a wild, low wail, the burden of which seemed to be something about a “misunderstanding.” He also mentioned the word “blackmail,” and hastily retracted it. He had always, he asserted passionately, been friendly to The Guardian. He admired it for its lofty courage, its unfailing fair-mindedness, its patriotism; and as an advertising medium he considered it without parallel or equal.
In token of which he had brought his copy for a full page in that day’s issue. And would Mr. Robson kindly note that he had taken a box for the Loyalty Rally on Saturday, being as good an American as anybody, even if he did bear a German name? And so, exit Mr. Ahrens, stringing out deprecatory statements about a misunderstanding as he went.
“For Heaven’s sake, Andy, what does it all mean?”
The general manager shook his disheveled head.
“Search me!” he said gravely. “Except for this: It means that The Guardian wins.”
“Have you reckoned it up?”
“Don’t need to. Outside a few of the Old Prussian Guard in the Deutscher Club we’ve got everything back that we lost, and a heap more on top of it.”
“But who’s been doing it? And what have they been doing?” cried the bewildered Jeremy.
“Not guilty on either count. Somebody’s been impressing our friends, the enemy, that there’s just one way to be saved, and that the only A1, guaranteed salvation is via The Guardian. Watch ’em crowd to the mourners’ seat.”
“What’s the paper been doing since I—”
“Not a thing. Not a blooming thing, Boss, but just sawing wood. This game wasn’t started from inside. I’ll swear to that. Whoever’s been doing the trick—and it looks to me as if there’d been some expert and ree-fined blackmail going on—has been keeping clear of us.”
“Judge Dana!” exclaimed Jeremy, struck with a thought.
“Well, I’ve been sort of wondering about him myself,” admitted the other. “Met him on the street yesterday and he wanted me to call him up as soon as you got back.”
“All right. Here I am.”
“Ay-ah? You’ve got to show me. You’re not back till Doc Summerfield says you’re back.”
The door opened and the amazed physiognomy of Buddy Higman appeared. “The Boss!” he exclaimed. “Holy Moses! I’m a liar.”
“What’s up, Buddy?”
“I’ve been stallin’ off Doc Summerfield and a crazy show-foor downstairs. They’re waitin’ now. They said would you come peaceable or be took. I told ’em you’d never been near here.”
“Tell ’em I’ll come peaceably, Buddy,” said the editor wearily. He turned to Andrew Galpin. “Andy.”
“Ay-ah?”
“You’re sure this is straight? You’re sure you’re not the one that’s crazy? Or I?”
“Am I sure! Go out the front way, Boss, and see the line waiting. That’ll convince you. I tell you, unless something busts, we’ll win out sure.”
Hardly could the editor and owner of The Guardian, led away by Doc Summerfield in deep disgrace, assimilate the hope of ultimate victory for his paper and himself. He dared not let himself believe in it yet, because of the intruding thought of Marcia and of what triumph might mean to him.
41
Click-click! Click-click! Clickety-click! One hundred pairs of knitting needles furnished a subdued castanet accompaniment to the voice of a long, lean lady-droner who stood upon the platform of the Fenchester Club Auditorium, and read from a typed list. At times she referred to various issues of The Guardian ranged on a flag-bedecked table. And at times the clickers paused to make notes in small books wherewith they had provided themselves for that very purpose. The gathering was the every morning meeting of the Fenchester Ladies War Reading Club.
Socially it was a comprehensively representative gathering, and something more. Pretty much every family whose comings and goings were wont to be entered (by Buddy Higman or some other arbiter of the elegancies) in The Guardian’s Society Notes had at least one member present. Sprinkled among the women who made up the active list of membership were a few associate members, mere males, and in the presiding officer’s chair sat Mr. Montrose Clark; for, after the regular proceedings of the day, special business was in order.
Miss Rappelje, the secretary, read from her list:
“Nicholas Engel, grocer. Last year, two columns a week, average. Since The Fair Dealer announcement, half a column.”
The castanet chorus diminished while the knitters and crocheters entered a note against Herr Engel’s grocery.
“The Fliess Brewing Company,” continued the reader. “Last year five columns; now, none.”
“Hurray for Prohibition! Beer’s a German drink anyway,” cried a voice, and there was a wave of laughter as the click
ing resumed.
“The Great Northwestern Stores. Last year three full pages, regularly, and on special sales as high as five—”
“Pardon me.” A member rose in the center of the house. “Mr. Ahrens sent a representative to tell me that, in spite of unsettled conditions, they have contracted to use more space in The Guardian than ever before, and to ask me to report it here.”
“Let ’em!” commented a determined and ominous voice. “I shall wait and see.”
From the murmur of assent which greeted this, it was evident that many would wait and see. So the reading went on, through dairies, laundries, undertakers, soft drinks, ice dealers, stationers, milliners, garages, all the lines of industry which bid in print for trade, while the knitters alternately toiled and made their notes.
Outside, in a small anteroom off the stage, Mr. Jeremy Robson put his obstinate head down and balked. Ten days’ enforced rest, except for his one escape, had gone far to restore him to fitness. Now he fended off Judge Selden Dana and demanded enlightenment.
“Not a step farther till I know what I’m up against,” he declared.
“All you have to do,” returned the lawyer soothingly, “is to trust to me and do as I tell you.”
“Is that all!” retorted Jeremy, with intent. “Who are these people outside and what are they doing?”
“They’re your well-earned enemies, and they’re saving the paper for you.”
“Somebody’s certainly done a job in that direction. But how? These sound like mostly women.”
“So they are. As to how they’re pulling your paper through, that’s the simplest thing in the world. We got up a War Reading Club.”
“Reading Club,” repeated Jeremy. “Perfectly simple! Of course! Andy Galpin said the whole town had gone crazy since I was laid up. Andy was right.”
“A great authority once proposed a classic question: ‘Who’s loony now?’ Wait until you hear the rest of this. The club meets here every morning to do knitting and other war-work while certain extracts from the local papers are read to them.”
“Good idea,” remarked Jeremy, weary but polite. “Shall I have something put in the paper about it?”
“My Lord, no!” almost shouted Dana.
Jeremy leaped in his chair. “I wish you wouldn’t do that sort of thing,” he protested.
“Still a bit jumpy? Well, I’ll explain in words of one syllable. But first apply your eye to this peep-hole and tell me what you think of our membership.”
Doing as he was directed, the editor looked out over what, in earlier days, he would have identified as a mass-meeting of The Guardian’s enemies.
“How much purchasing power per year in the local stores would you suppose they represent?” asked Dana.
“A big lot. Quarter of a million, maybe.”
“Nearer twice that. Now, we’ve got a little committee called the Committee on Selective Reading. I happen to be chairman of it. Our committee chooses what advertisements—you get that, Jem?—what advertisements shall be read each day. That’s our White List. Our members deal only with merchants whose loyalty is above suspicion. What would you think of the loyalty of an advertiser who quit The Guardian to go into The Fair Dealer?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m prejudiced.”
“So is the War Reading Club. It’s my committee’s business to keep ’em prejudiced—against any merchant who advertises in the wrong place. Now, our theory is that our members read no advertisements, themselves, and don’t intend to; certainly not after The Fair Dealer appears. Therefore they know of the local advertising only as the Committee on Selective Reading chooses it for them. That’s the theory.”
“What’s the fact?”
“The fact is that ninety-nine per cent of those women will see any merchant in town doubly damned before they spend a cent in his shop unless he sticks by The Guardian as long as The Guardian sticks by the country. Do you get it now?”
“Boycott!”
“And blackmail. You should have seen the weak-kneed among the store-people when we let our programme leak out! You heard part of it from Galpin.”
“Dana,” said the editor, “if you’d told me this before, you’d have saved me some mighty tough days.”
“Couldn’t risk it. Can’t you see that we’ve been skirting the ragged edge of the law? If you’d been in on it, The Fair Dealer could have charged conspiracy.”
“Then why tell me now?”
“We-ell, we can’t work under cover much longer. Besides, I doubt if there’s much of any fight left in Embree and his crowd.” He peered out through the peep-hole. “They’ve turned it into an experience meeting now,” he remarked. “Then you come on. They’re expecting you. Will you come peaceably or be escorted?”
“Let me keep out of sight until it’s my turn, anyway,” pleaded Jeremy.
So the lawyer, leading him in, established him behind a wing where he was half-hidden, and placed himself as a screen. As he settled himself down, a plump and luxuriously dressed woman at the rear of the hall rose and said austerely:
“I disapprove The Guardian’s local policy. I consider it unfair and prejudiced against—er—ah—against our kind of people. But while we are at war I agree to support it loyally and to deal only with those who support it.”
“Are my eyes playing tricks?” whispered Jeremy in Dana’s ear. “Or is that Mrs. Ambrose Galsworth, who tried to have me blackballed at the Canoe Club?”
“She’s a new member. Wait! There’s worse to come,” chuckled the lawyer.
A little, lean, brisk, twinkling old maid projected herself out of her seat with a jumping-jack effect.
“I never expected to live to see the day I’d speak for The Guardian after they printed that awful political attack on my dear uncle,” she declared. “But the country first! Put down Celia Jenney on your list. And”—her black bright eyes snapped out sparks—“if there’s a store in town that don’t want my trade while this war is on, all it has to do is to take its advertising out of The Guardian and put it into The Fair Dealer—if that’s its silly name.”
“She spends only about fifteen thousand a year in this town,” observed Dana aside to Jeremy.
“No wonder the advertisers have been falling over themselves to get back into the paper!” murmured the editor.
After further informal pledges the chairman called for reports from the “Missionary Workers.” Up rose Alderman Crobin—Crooked Crobin, as The Guardian had dubbed him for years.
“T’ree of my constitchoonts assured me this mahrnin’—voluntarily, ye ondherstand; quite voluntarily—that they are cancelin’ their contract wid th’ noo paper.”
A tall, pale young woman rose in the center of the house, and as she moistened her nervous lips a murmur and a rustle swept over the audience; for this was Mrs. Dennis Robbins, Governor Embree’s sister.
“I bring five pledges of advertisers to stand by The Guardian—and America,” she said in a low voice; and a quick ripple of sympathetic applause answered her.
Before it had died away, old Madam Taylor rustled silkily to her feet.
“I’m the tax-dodger,” she cackled. “See The Guardian if you don’t believe it. But I never dodged a good fight. Two stores that I trade with cut down their advertising in The Guardian. So I cut down my trade with them. I cut it down to nothing. Now I understand they feel differently about the paper,” she concluded malevolently.
Up popped pursy little Mrs. Stockmuller. “Me, I quit Ahrens anyway,” she announced, and sat down flushed with the resultant applause of the multitude and suddenly conscious of latent and hitherto unsuspected capabilities as a public speaker.
Then little Anne Serviss pledged the support of three hundred University girls, and following her, the Reverend Mr. Merserole reared himself impressively into sight and hearing.
“Inter arma, rixæ minores silent,” he proclaimed oracularly, “if my friend Judge Dana, whom I observe upon the stage, will permit me to alter a legal proverb to fit the oc
casion. ‘In time of war, lesser quarrels are stilled.’ Many of us have had our—er—trials with The Guardian. But all that is forgotten in the larger cause. I beg to report, Mr. Chairman, that eighteen members of my church—leading members, I may add—have signed an agreement to advertise in no local morning paper during the war.”
“But that’s boycott and against the law, isn’t it?” queried some cautious member.
Dana jumped to his feet.
“Let ’em take it up!” he cried, his face lighted by a joyous snarl. “Just let us get ’em into court on it!”
A shout answered him. There was no mistaking the temper of that crowd. Friends or enemies of The Guardian’s lesser policies, they were shoulder to shoulder now in the common cause. A conservative old judge was just resuming his seat, after reporting, when the door was jerked open and there burst into the aisle Andrew Galpin, livid with the excitement of great tidings.
“They’ve quit!” he shouted. Then, recalling himself to the proprieties, he added: “I beg pardon, Mr. Chairman. But they’ve quit!”
Mr. Montrose Clark rose. “Mr. Andrew Galpin, of The Guardian,” he announced. “Mr. Galpin has, perhaps, matter of interest to present before this meeting.”
“They’ve quit. That’s all,” said the excited Galpin. His wild and roving glance fell upon Jeremy Robson who had incautiously moved forward at sight of his associate, and the last vestige of parliamentary decorum departed from him. “Do you get that, Boss?” he bellowed. “The Botches have quit. We win.”
“Who’s quit?” “What’s a Botch?” “Platform!” “Tell us about it.”
“What’s a Botch?” repeated the general manager. “Bausch is a Botch. Wanser’s a Botch. The Deutscher Club’s a batch of Botches. ‘Smiling Mart’ Embree’s a Botch, The Fair Dealer would have been a Botch, but there isn’t going to be any Fair Dealer. They couldn’t stand the gaff you folks put to ’em. Publication day’s indefinitely postponed.”
Hardly had he finished when Jeremy Robson found himself being hustled by Judge Dana and the chairman, who had possessed themselves of an arm apiece, to the front of the platform. The house rose to him in a burst of acclaim. He looked out, with nerves aquiver, across that waiting audience of one-time enemies, opponents bitter and implacable, bitterly and implacably fought in many an unforgotten campaign; now his allies, rallying to a service greater than all past hatreds, higher than all past loyalties.
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