CHAPTER X

The step on the stairs was an unsteady step. The foreman reeled into the room. Ned's eyes brightened. Would not Bob Platt's opportune spree seem the explanation of any difficulty that might arise on account of the lost copy, and also of any deficiency in the type-setting?

Still he hardly felt secure from detection until he saw the foreman with the quoins and the shooting-stick in his hand. Not so tipsy was Bob Platt that he was not now as always the deft and experienced handicraftsman. A blow from the mallet here and a blow there,--the locking was done; and Ned, feeling tipsy himself, dizzy with excitement, crept out and sat down on the dark staircase.

He wished no one to hear how he panted, for he could hardly breathe as he reflected on his daring deed. His eyes were hot; he wanted no one to see the exultant gleam that was chasing the fright out of them.

Now and then he squirmed aside to escape a big foot that brought a burly shadow lumbering up the stairs, for the printers were coming in again; so presently were the latest dispatches and the last of the copy. The telephone bell continually jingled. There was once more the stir of haste and work and confusion in the composing-room,--the setting up of the final columns for the other forms. Ned listened occasionally, expecting to hear his name called. But Bob Platt did not need him. It seemed a long time that he sat there, gazing up through the narrow stair window at the stars, those fair and foreign worlds, glittering so high above the roofs, above the clouds, above the winds.

He heard now and then the agitated voice of the telegraph editor. Once a reporter came up the stairs in great bounds and with a momentum as if he had been flung from a catapult. Doubtless he thought he had a "scoop." "It's a fake, I bet," thought Ned, recovering his normal size, for he had shrunken to very small proportions to avoid that headlong rush. He had the best of reasons in his own experience to know how very thin some of these scoops were.

He realized how the hour was wearing on when he heard the rattle of the mailing wagons on the stones in the side street. It must be midnight.

Suddenly the thunder of the printing-press broke forth, clank, clank, clamor and clank. The air was vibrating with its regular, rhythmic throbs. The building palpitated with it as if it were alive. It was like the beating heart of a great full-pulsed civilization.

"They're printing my work right now," cried Ned with all the pride of an author.

Then a twinge of anxiety seized him. He remembered his limited opportunities, and he had the grace to hope that there were not too many mistakes in the type-setting.

But such a sight has rarely been seen as that presented by the third column of the second page when the reeking sheets came from the press. It was probably discovered by the more distant subscribers receiving the journal by mail before the paper, as personified by its employees, knew what had happened to itself.

The town, the immediate vicinity, also read it betimes. And certainly, although the enormity was caught in the second edition and hastily replaced with an article already in type on the tariff, the editor-in-chief was an object of pity the next morning, when opening complacently the folds of the journal, his eye fell on Ned's handiwork in the midst of the wit and wisdom of the important editorials. There, instead of the severe "reply" that should prove he was no merely malicious calumniator of innocence and integrity, was a typographical caricature of the prospectus of the paper.

Wildly leaded, with inverted u's and n's and p's and d's, incredibly "fat," it drunkenly and disconnectedly protested its devotion to the best interests of the public; "the People's Paper," it reiterated, with every inadvertent caper the printer's art is heir to. It bragged of its facilities, its presses, its talented writers, its supplements, and with orthographical vagaries to which the phonetic craze presents a soberly conventional aspect it pointed with pride to its career as a popular educator. Such "spells" as Ned had perpetrated! Lastly, with a crookedness that was very like a typographic leer, it begged to call attention to its handsome appearance.

Rude Boreas was but a piping reed to the way the staff roared with wrath. Ned arrived at the office in the midst of the storm. He had a confused sense of the general desolation; then the surroundings were canceled by the sight of the foreman's face, pale and agitated.

"What ails the boss?" he demanded of a junior compositor.

"The grand bounce!" responded that worthy.

Ned winced. This was an unexpected turn of affairs. He remembered the foreman's wife, who had fallen into a hopeless stage of consumption, and their four small and helpless girls.

"He has been tight afore this, a-many a time," said Ned doggedly, trying to justify himself in his own mind for not having foreseen this possibility. Scheme as he might, things went worse and worse. "He has been drunk time and time again."

"Never like this," said the young typo, bursting with laughter. "My eye! When I first saw that column I thought I had the jim-jams myself."

In the investigations that were in progress the foreman admitted that he had been very drunk the previous night. Therefore he was at the mercy of anything that circumstantial evidence could prove upon him. The fact was elicited by reference to the proof that the article in question had been set up correctly. "And then," he confessed, "I came up here as drunk as a mink--a mule--after everything was in the chase, to lock the form, and like a tom-fool I must have set up this prospectus from the new copy, and I don't know _how_ I could have knocked the type into this crazy pi."

This seemed the only reasonable solution of the mystery, and it was accepted without demur or question. While Ned went about his ordinary work he listened anxiously to the sound of the editor's voice as he still bemoaned himself with his confrères in the "rinktum." Time had softened his sorrows only a very little. His tones were still pervaded by rage and grief, modulated but slightly by an appreciation of futility. It was like the subsiding anguish of a bull-dog when the burglar is gone!

Ned could but hope that the "bouncing" of the foreman would be reconsidered. This Bob Platt was a good fellow, and heretofore his weakness for strong drink had never interfered with his capable performance of duty. He had been in the office twenty years as man and boy; and now he was to be chucked out of it for an offense which he had never committed.

"He oughtn't ter have been drunk," thought Ned.

And this was very true!

Bob Platt was a good printer, however; gilt-edged, Ned argued, taking courage,--and could no doubt easily find work elsewhere, with all his experience as foreman and capacity in management. Then Ned reflected that this story would be likely to create a ripple in typographic circles, and employers would be indisposed to engage a printer whose sprees expressed themselves in such fantastic publicity. Bob Platt might fail to get work. And there was the sick wife, and there were the small girls.

Ned once more began the profitable and pleasant occupation of hoping against hope. The staff would _never_ part with Bob Platt. Ned hardly believed they could run the paper without him.

The printer's devil would not realize the mischief he had unintentionally done till he saw Bob Platt standing in the door of the composing-room, leaving behind him his friends, his twenty years of industry and capacity, and the trustworthy reputation they had earned for him, all lost, as completely canceled as the editor's copy.

He was trying to carry it off jauntily. His hat was stuck on one side. He chewed hard on his quid of tobacco. He laughed as he nodded over his shoulder to the group of printers in the composing-room. "Be good to yourselves, boys! So long!"

Ned saw the haggard change in his face as he turned. He was going out empty-handed, with a dying wife and four small girls, to meet the cold, hard, tight-fisted, grinding world. Ned knew how cold, how hard, how tight-fisted, how grinding that world is!

"Say!" he screamed suddenly, throwing himself upon Bob Platt, "I done it! I done it! I done it, myself. If they hang me for it I can't hide it! I burnt the copy an' distributed the type of that editorial, an' fixed the purspectus in its place"--he remembered how awfully it looked--"as well as I could." The champion concluded with a sob.

Bob Platt stood for a moment staring, motionless.

"You Black-eyed Bamboozler of Beelzebub!" he exclaimed, with an unconscious alliterative habit contracted from the corrupting influence of headlines.

He might have been expected to fall on the self-accuser's neck for joy. He did nothing of the sort. He clutched Ned by the nape of that structure, and the doughty devil's feet hardly touched the floor once in the rapid transit to the "rinktum."

"Here's this Imp of Iniquity," cried the foreman indignantly, "who says that he distributed the type and canceled the copy and set up that prospectus on purpose!"

"What on earth"--they mentioned a different region--"did you do it for?" rose the editorial chorus.

"'Cause," sobbed the champion censor of the press, "I didn't want that copee ter be printed. 'T warn't true!"

There was a short silence.

The conclave of editors stood aghast at the idea of printing truth only!

The managing editor was the first to recover his faculties. "You are the boy who was arrested about this affair of Gorham's Theatre, I believe?" he said.

"Yes, sir," sobbed Ned. "An' Mr. Gorham never had no more to do with burnin' that theaytre than I had. 'T was ter _spite him_ it was burned."

"Then you know who did burn it?"

The managing editor had fairly cornered Ned, but the obstinate boy refused to reply. For a time threats and persuasions were alike useless. Only by strongly representing to him that Gorham would be ruined unless the matter were cleared up was the truth sifted out little by little.

Mr. Gorham was finally summoned, and a full explanation ensued. He fairly foamed at the mouth with rage when with much difficulty he was at last made to understand the nature and extent of the suspicions harbored against him. He promptly identified the several malefactors from Ned's description of them, called in the police, and gave such details of their associates, habits, and habitat that before nightfall one of them, the bandy-legged scamp, who had once been employed about the theatre as a supernumerary actor, was arrested and safely lodged in jail. He "squealed" very promptly and earnestly in the hope of being allowed the benefit of "State's evidence," and by his means the star's diamonds were traced through a variety of "fences" and recovered; his accomplice in this theft was also apprehended by the trail of the stolen costumes, and somewhat later the "first player" was captured and cast for a rôle with a long run behind the bars. Ned was much relieved when it was now made known that the company had lost nothing by the forcing of the safe in the theatre, for contrary to the usual habit the receipts were not left on that occasion in the office of the building and the criminals had gained practically nothing in bursting the lock.

Ned was amazed to see how the truth does prevail, how readily and implicitly his story was believed when it was given from the witness stand, and how promptly he was acquitted. Gorham took advantage of every technicality and prosecuted the villains to the extremest limit of the law. They deserved all that they got, which was indeed good measure, but in his observation of Gorham in these days Ned became more and more aware that impulse is a poor substitute for principle as a basis of action, and that although impulse may serve as an excuse for much that is fierce or weak, it detracts from the merit of what is good. Gorham's kindly whim which restored him to liberty was no whit more kindly than the severe editor's lecture bidding him observe what great evils may grow from a cowardly concealment of the truth.

"It would have ruined us all but for the gilt-edged way the champion set that type," the managing editor presently observed aside, with a laugh, to his colleague. And with the recollection the editor-in-chief, whose copy was canceled by the devil, was at last able to laugh too.

For those strong and false accusations of Gorham, which would have laid the paper liable for libel, were never published, and the insurance companies made good the loss by the fire in great haste and with many plausible and polite excuses for the previous delay.

Peter Bateman's perjury was committed in so important a case that it did not escape notice. On the trial he broke down and confessed, hoping to elude punishment on the strength of his penitence. In fact he was so limp, so tearful, so flabby, so fat, that he produced a youthful, irresponsible impression, and narrowly missing the State Prison, he was sent to the Reform School, where it is to be hoped he is learning that there is some policy as well as piety in keeping the ninth commandment.

Ned continues to work in the composing-room bossed by Bob Platt. For on the memorable day when the champion's exploit of type-setting was explained, the whole editorial corps turned to and besought the discharged foreman, unjustly accused and maltreated, to remain, and after much insistence he gracefully yielded.

But Bob Platt learned a lesson too, and has joined the Sons of Temperance.

Often now when the evening is lingering long on the spires and domes and mansard roofs, and the moon rises up from among them somewhere, as if she were a resident of the town rarely straying beyond the corporate limits, and the mocking-bird mounts his perch in the barber-shop below and sings his roundelay,--poor captive troubadour!--and the stars muster one by one, and the composing-room is dusky save for a dim gas-jet here and there, and is filled with mellow shadows and mellow memories too, the foreman and the devil are wont to lean on the window-sill and look out and enjoy the interval of rest, and the touch of the breeze, and the faint, fading, roseate flush in the west, and laugh as they talk over again in much amity this exploit of the champion's type-setting.

The Riverside Press _Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A._

* * * * *

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