CHAPTER III.
THE OLD GENTLEMAN OF THE OXYGEN

POOR Myles had met with so many rebuffs and disappointments, and his own opinion of himself had been so decidedly lowered that afternoon, that he was fully prepared to have his offer of service refused by the city editor of the Phonograph. He was therefore not at all surprised when Mr. Haxall began in his kindly but unmistakable way to tell him that there was no vacancy. He had already made up his mind to give up trying for a reporter’s position and make an effort in some other direction, when, to his amazement, he found himself accepted and ordered to report for duty the following day. It was incomprehensible. What had Van Cleef said to influence the city editor so remarkably?

There was no chance to ask just then, for Mr. Haxall had already resumed his reading of the evening papers, a great pile of which lay on his desk, and Myles realized that the short interview, by which the whole course of his life was to be affected, was at an end. So he merely said: “Thank you, sir, I’ll be on hand,” and turned to follow Van Cleef, who had already started toward the door.

The boy’s mind was in a conflicting whirl of thoughts, and he was conscious of a decided sense of exaltation. He had actually got into business and was to receive a salary. To be sure, it was only promised for one week; but even in that short time he felt that he could prove so useful that the city editor would wonder how he had ever got along without him.

As they passed into the anteroom of the office Van Cleef introduced his companion to a Mr. Brown, a stout, middle-aged man, who occupied a dingy little den, in which he was busily writing by the light of a single gas-jet. Mr. Brown was affably condescending, was pleased to make Mr. Manning’s acquaintance, and hoped he would like the office.

As they bade him good-evening and started downstairs Myles asked:

“Who is this Mr. Brown, Van? Is he one of the editors?”

“Bless you, no,” laughed Van Cleef. “He is the janitor of the building.”

“The janitor!” exclaimed Myles, with a slight tone of contempt in his voice. “Why, I thought he must be the managing editor at the very least. What on earth did you want to introduce me to the janitor for? I’m not in the habit of knowing such people.”

“Oh, you are not, aren’t you!” replied Van Cleef, a little scornfully. “Well, the sooner you form the habit the better you will get along as a reporter. It’s no use putting on airs, old man,” he continued, more kindly. “A reporter has got to be on friendly terms with all sorts of men, from presidents to janitors, and a good deal lower in the social scale than that too. Besides, Brown is a mighty good fellow, as you will find out when you come to know him. He also occupies a position in which he can smooth your path or make you uncomfortable in many little ways, as he takes a notion. Why, for one thing, he has charge of all those rascals of office-boys, and they will treat you respectfully or the reverse according as they see that you are in Brown’s good or bad graces. That seems a little thing, but you will find that it makes a great difference to your peace of mind. Oh, yes, you must cultivate Brown by all means.”

When they were seated in the elevated train on their way up-town Myles suddenly remembered his companion’s mysterious communication to the city editor, and asked him what he had said to cause Mr. Haxall to alter his decision so completely.

“It was evident,” he continued, “that he was about to give me a polite dismissal, but you whispered a word or two in his ear and he immediately engaged me. What was it? Did you tell him I was one of the principal stockholders in the paper?”

Van Cleef burst into a fit of laughter so uncontrollable that it was a full minute before he could answer. At last he said:

“No, indeed; I didn’t tell him that you were a stockholder in the paper; for, in the first place, I didn’t know that you were. In the second place, the stockholders are the bane of his existence, and worry him more than anybody else by forcing worthless fellows, who have some claim upon them, into his department. Oh, no, I wasn’t going to ruin your chances by representing you in any such unfavorable light as that.”

“What did you tell him then?”

“Why, I simply mentioned that you owned a dress-suit.”

For a moment Myles stared at his companion in speechless amazement. Finally he gasped out:

“A dress-suit! You told him that I owned a dress-suit! What in the name of common sense could that have to do with his taking me on as a reporter? Or are you only joking?”

“Not a bit of it,” answered Van Cleef. “It honestly was the dress-suit, and nothing else, unless it was your manner and personal appearance that fixed the business for you. You see, there are lots of places to which a city editor wishes to send a reporter where only fellows in full evening dress are admitted. Now, most reporters are too poor to own dress-suits, or else they have so little use for such luxuries that they don’t care to go to the expense. Thus it is often hard for the city editor to find a man for some important bit of work just on this account. He therefore keeps a list of all the reporters on the staff who own swallow-tails, and is mighty glad to add to it, especially if the proposed addition is evidently a gentleman. I saw that he wasn’t going to give you a show, and just then it occurred to me to suggest the only special recommendation I could think of. But what makes you look so downcast? It worked all right, didn’t it?”

“Oh, yes,” answered Myles, whose self-esteem had just received the severest shock of the day by learning the secret of his recent success, which he had fondly imagined was owing to something far different. “Yes, it worked all right; but I’ve always heard that clothes did not make the man, while here is proof positive that clothes can at least make a reporter. It is awfully humiliating, and the worst of it is that I haven’t a dress-suit.”

“Why, I have seen you wear it time and again?” exclaimed Van Cleef.

“Yes, but I found it necessary to raise a little ready money to-day,” answered Myles, though he hated to make the admission; “so I sold it along with some other things I thought I should never need again to Johnny, the ‘old-clo’ man.’”

“You don’t mean it!” cried Van Cleef. “Well, that is bad, and the only thing for you to do is to go to Johnny first thing in the morning and make him let you have it back.”

“But I am afraid I haven’t money enough to redeem it,” said Myles, with a heightened color. In the set to which he had so recently belonged poverty was the thing most sneered at, and Myles had not yet learned that it was one of the last things to be ashamed of.

“Oh, I can make that all right,” answered the other, cheerfully. “I have a few dollars put away against next year’s term-bills, and you are more than welcome to them. Yes, indeed, you must take them,” he added, earnestly, as he saw the shadow of a refusal in his companion’s face. “We must get hold of that dress-suit again if it is a possible thing. It will really be doing me a favor besides; for while I have them I’m always tempted to spend those dollars. If they are invested as a loan, though, I can’t spend them, and I shall have the satisfaction of knowing they are safe.”

Myles had tried, unsuccessfully, to borrow a small sum of money that morning from several of his wealthy classmates. Now, to have this generous offer made by one of the very poorest among them was so overwhelming that he hardly knew what to say. He hated to accept money from one who was so little able to spare it. He also feared to hurt his friend’s feelings by refusing, and he realized the importance of recovering that dress-suit. These thoughts flashed through his mind in an instant, and then he did exactly the right thing, by heartily thanking Van Cleef for his kind offer and accepting it.

The “Oxygen” was a club occupying a small but well appointed club-house, supported by one of the college Greek-letter fraternities of which Myles had recently been made a member. He was very proud of belonging to this, his first club, but he foresaw that, with his altered circumstances, it was a luxury that he could no longer afford. He had therefore made up his mind to hand in his resignation that very evening.

After a particularly nice little dinner, for Myles, like many another, was inclined to be very generous in the expenditure of his last dollar, and after he had written a line to his mother, the friends sat in the reading-room. Here they talked in low tones of their future plans and of their college life, which, to Myles, already seemed to belong to the dim past. The only other occupant of the room was a small, rather insignificant looking old gentleman, who was carelessly glancing over some papers at a table near them. Finally Van Cleef asked to be excused for a short time, as he had an errand that would take him a few blocks from there, and which must be done that evening.

He had hardly left when the old gentleman looked up from his papers and said to Myles:

“I beg your pardon, but are you not Mr. Manning, captain of the X – College ’Varsity crew?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Myles, “I am – that is, I was – I mean my name is Manning, and I was until this morning captain of the crew; but I have resigned.”

“Indeed! I am very sorry to hear it,” replied the old gentleman, with an air of interest. “Would you mind telling me why you found it necessary to do so? I am an old X – College man myself, and take a great interest in all its athletic sports, especially its boating. I have been much pleased with the performance thus far of this year’s crew under your captaincy, and regret seriously that you feel obliged to give it up.”

Encouraged by the old gentleman’s friendly manner, and very grateful for his sympathy and kindly interest in himself, Myles readily answered his questions, and within a few minutes was surprised to find how 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 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 o’clock the two weary fellows turned into bed, Myles sharing his companion’s humble lodgings for the night.