Under Orders: The story of a young reporter. Munroe Kirk
freely he was talking to this stranger. He could not have told how it was brought about, but before their conversation ended he had confided to the other all his trials, plans, and hopes, including the facts that he was on the morrow to begin life as a reporter on the Phonograph, and that he intended resigning from the Oxygen that evening.
When Myles realized that he was becoming almost too confidential, and checked himself as he was about to relate the dress-suit incident, the old gentleman said:
“I have been greatly interested in all this, and now, to show that I appreciate the confidence you have reposed in me, I am going to ask a favor of you.”
“Which I shall be only too happy to grant, sir, provided it lies within my power,” answered Myles, who had taken a great fancy to the old gentleman.
“It is that you will not resign from the Oxygen.”
“But I must, sir, much as I hate to.”
“Not necessarily,” replied the other. “You know that at the business meetings of the club all members are allowed to vote by proxy if they are unable to be personally present. Now I am nearly always compelled to be absent from these meetings. In fact, I rarely find time to visit the club at all; but, as one of its founders, I am most anxious for its success, and desirous of still having a voice in the conduct of its affairs. This I can only do by appointing a regular proxy, and if you will kindly consent to act as such for me I will gladly pay your dues to the club, and shall still consider myself under an obligation to you.”
The temptation to accept this friendly proposal was so great that Myles only protested feebly against it. His faint objections were quickly overruled by the old gentleman, who had no sooner gained the other’s consent to remain in the club and act as his proxy than he looked at his watch and, exclaiming, “Bless me, it is later than I thought!” bade Myles a cordial good-night and hurried away.
“What did you say his name was?” asked Van Cleef, after he had returned and listened to Myles’ enthusiastic description of his new friend and account of their interview.
“His name?” repeated Myles, hesitatingly, “why, I don’t believe he mentioned it. I’ll go and ask the door-tender.”
But the door-tender had just been relieved and gone home, while the boy who acted in his place of course knew nothing of who had come or gone before he went on duty.
“Well, that is good,” laughed Van Cleef, when Myles returned and, with a crestfallen air, announced that he could not discover the name of the person for whom he had just consented to act as proxy. “The old gentleman has shown himself to be a better reporter, or detective, which is much the same thing, than you, Manning. He has gained a full knowledge of you and your plans, while you have learned absolutely nothing about him. He may be an impostor, for all you know.”
“Not much he isn’t,” answered Myles, somewhat indignantly; “I’d trust his face for all that he claimed, and a good deal more beside. Anyhow he is a Psi Delt, for he had the grip.”
“Oh, well,” said Van Cleef, good-naturedly, seeing that his companion was a little provoked at being thought easily imposed upon, “I dare say it’s all right, and you’ll 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 o’clock.
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 don’t mind my looking at the blotter?”
“Certainly not.”
“Hello! what’s 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, that’s 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 it’s worth looking up. So if you don’t 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 couldn’t 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 woman’s 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 o’clock as they reached the Phonograph office. The editorial rooms were ablaze