CHAPTER III.

HEMMING VISITS THE MANAGER OF THE SYNDICATE

Hemming's club was a favourite resort of military and naval men stationed near town, or home on leave. He met half a dozen whom he knew more or less intimately. All had something to say about his change of career, but presently he escaped them, and sought a quiet corner of the reading-room, where he could smoke and stare at the latest papers. Reading was out of the question. He might as well have tried to sing. Several times he was ready to leave the club and return to Miss Travers, but the memory of the movement she had made when he had touched her shoulder kept him crushed in his chair. He dined at the club, and drank more than was his custom. The sound wine brought colour back to his cheeks.

A youngster, who had been stationed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for a year past, came over to his table with an American magazine in his hand.

"Do you know, old chap, your stories are quite the rage in Halifax," he said. "I notice, though, that the fellows here do not know what you are up to at all. One soon leaves the trick of reading the magazines on the other side."

This unexpected word for his literary work cheered Hemming considerably. He invited the youth to seat himself and have a cigar. Soon he found himself telling his admirer something of his aspirations.

When Anderson of the Royal Engineers came in, he found Hemming and the lieutenant on leave from Canada still talking across the table. Anderson was Hemming's senior by some four or five years, but they had been friends since childhood. After their greeting, Anderson said:

"Have you seen Penthouse?"

"Yes, I met him about five o'clock," replied Hemming.

Anderson's face brightened, and he slapped his knee with his broad hand.

"I ran across him in an apothecary's shop a few hours ago, and, as I had just heard of your arrival, I wondered if you had met him," he said. "You see," he continued, "I have had my eye on him of late. The Travers and I are still very good friends, you know."

"This sounds very interesting," broke in the lieutenant. "What is it all about?"

"I hardly know myself," answered Hemming.

The lieutenant wished them good night, shook hands cordially with both, and, after assuring Hemming that he would watch eagerly for everything he wrote, left the dining-room.

"Williams seems a good sort," remarked Hemming.

Anderson did not answer. He looked as if he were thinking unusually hard.

"I suppose you'll be in town for a while," he said.

"I leave to-morrow for Greece. I'm a newspaper correspondent now," replied Hemming.

"You must stay a few days," said the engineer. "A few days will do it. You have no right to fly off the handle like that."

"Like what?" asked the other.

"My dear boy, I have known for a week just how it would be, and now I am in rather a hole myself," said Anderson.

"Have you been living a double life?" inquired Hemming, with a sneer.

"Great heavens!" exclaimed the lusty sapper, "do you mean to say?--but no, I only told the lady that Penthouse was a rotten little liar. Strong language, I must admit."

Hemming laughed shortly.

"You must not trouble yourself too much, Dicky, for it's really not worth while," he said.

A little later Hemming excused himself to his friend on the plea that he had to return to his hotel, and write some letters.

"I am my own master no longer," he said.

"I think you are just beginning," replied Anderson, drily.

Hemming looked into the future, saw his body journeying, vagrant as the wind, and his hand at a hundred adventures, but never an hour of freedom. He went down the wide steps and into the street with hell and longing in his heart.

Hemming spent two weeks in Greece. He wrote a few descriptive stories for his syndicate, and then crossed into Turkey, where he was offered a commission. He wired that fighting was certain. The syndicate thought otherwise, and called him across the world to see or make trouble in South America. He cursed their stupidity and started, spending only a few hours in England, and taking ship in Liverpool for New York. Arriving in that city, he and his possessions (and he carried a full outfit) journeyed in a cab to an old and respectable hotel on Broadway. The fare he had to pay opened his eyes. But what could he do beyond staring the cabby out of countenance with his baleful, glaring eye-glass? At the hotel, they were kind enough to take him for a duke in disguise. Next morning he found his way to the offices of the New York News Syndicate, in a high gray building on Fulton Street. He scrambled into one of the great caged elevators, close on the heels of a stout gentleman in a yellow spring overcoat and silk hat. The lift was lighted by several small electric bulbs. The air was warm, and heavy with the scent of stale cigarette smoke.

"New York News Syndicate," said Hemming to the attendant.

"Third floor," said the man, and up they shot and stopped. The iron grating was rolled back. Hemming stepped out into a cool, white-floored hall, and, turning, found the stout gentleman at his heels.

"I think you are Captain Hemming," said the stranger, "and I am quite sure I am Benjamin Dodder."

"Ah! the manager of the syndicate," exclaimed Hemming, waggling Mr. Dodder's extended hand, and looking keenly into his wide, clean-shaven face. Dodder was a much younger man than his figure would lead one to suppose. Hemming thought his face far too heavy for his bright, good-natured brown eyes.

"I got in last night, and came 'round for orders," explained Hemming.

"That was good of you," replied the manager, looking gratified. He led the way through several large rooms, where clerks and stenographers were hard at work, to his private office. He paused at the door, and turning, said to a clerk with a glaring red necktie and beautifully parted hair: "Ask Mr. Wells to step into my room when he comes. Tell him Captain Herbert Hemming has arrived." A dozen keen, inquiring faces were lifted from desk and machine, and turned toward the new correspondent.

Within the manager's office were expensively upholstered chairs, leather-topped tables, polished bookcases, and half a dozen admirably chosen engravings, and above the grate many photographs, with signatures scrawled across them. The carpet underfoot was soft and thick.

"Try this chair, sir," invited Mr. Dodder.

Hemming sank into it, and balanced his hat and stick on his knees; Mr. Dodder snatched them from him and placed them on his table. Then he pulled off his coat and expanded his chest.

"Now I begin to feel like working," he remarked, with youthful gusto.

"What an extraordinary chap," thought Hemming.

Dodder opened a drawer in his table, and took out a box of cigars. Hemming recognized the label, and remembered that they cost, in London, three shillings apiece by the hundred.

"Have a smoke. They're not half bad," said the manager, extending the box.

The Englishman lit a weed, and felt that it was time to begin business.

"Why did you recall me from Greece?" he asked. "They are sure to stand up to Turkey, unless all signs fail."

This straightforward question seemed to catch the manager unawares. He rolled his cigar about between his white fingers, and crossed and uncrossed his legs several times before he answered.

"It's this way," he began, and paused to glance at the closed door. From the door his eyes turned to Hemming. "We believe as you do," he said, "but another man wanted the job. He left here three days ago."

As Hemming had nothing to say to that, Dodder continued: "The other chap has been with us five or six years, and, though he is a good writer, he knows nothing of war. You were my choice, but Devlin happens to be Wells's brother-in-law. I was up against it all right, so I slid off as easy as I could."

"Thank you all the same," said Hemming. "Now tell me what you want done in South America."

"We want you to start in Yucatan," replied Dodder, "or somewhere along there, and travel, with a nigger or two, to any part of the country that promises copy. If you hear of a revolution anywhere, go hunt it out. Use the wire when you have news, but for the rest of it write good, full stories in your usual style. Why, captain, have you any idea how many newspapers, in this country and Canada, printed each of those stories of yours from Greece and Turkey?"

Hemming shook his head.

"Twenty-six, no less," said the manager. "I believe you would prove a paying investment if we marooned you on Anticosti," he added.

"I am glad you like my stuff," answered Hemming, "and as for Anticosti, why, I believe one could make some interesting copy there."

"You must try it one of these days," said Dodder.

At that moment, a thin, undersized man entered the room, without the formality of knocking. He walked with a slight limp in his left foot. Dodder introduced him to Hemming as Mr. Wells, the syndicate's treasurer, and a partner in the concern. Wells gave the correspondent a nerveless handshake.

"Glad to meet you," he said, and turned to the manager with an air of inquiry.

It was clear to the Englishman that Dodder was not thoroughly at ease in his partner's company. He returned to his cigar and his seat with a suggestion of "by your leave" in his air.

"I think we shall let Captain Hemming start south as soon as he likes," he said.

"It's a pleasure trip, is it?" remarked Wells, with his hands in his pockets, and a casual eye on the Englishman.

Hemming stared, his cigar half-raised to his lips. Dodder flushed.

"Then Captain Hemming shall start day after to-morrow," he said, in a soothing voice. Wells paid no attention to this remark.

"I want you to send in more copy. You might let us have extra stories from each place, under another name. We could use them," he said to Hemming. The monocle held him in its unwinking regard for several seconds. Then the Englishman spoke:

"I wish you to understand me from the start," he said. "When I was in the service of my country, I was perfectly willing to do one man's work, or three men's work, for the pay that I got, because it was a matter of sentiment with me, and because I could afford to do it. But now, if I do two men's work, as you suggest, I draw double pay. Another thing, I shall take my orders from one man, or I shall take no orders at all. Mr. Dodder is my man for choice."

It was evident that this speech of the new correspondent's threw Dodder into a flurry, and left Wells aghast. Hemming sat in his comfortable chair, and calmly smoked his excellent cigar. At last Wells found his voice.

"I think the less I have to do with this man, the better," he said, and left the room. When the door shut behind him, Dodder sighed with relief.

"Thank God that's over," he said, and immediately expanded to his former genial self.

"What is the matter with him?" asked Hemming, mildly.

"Guess he was born that way," replied the manager, "and he really doesn't know what an impression he gives. He has a great head for business."

"I should judge so," said Hemming.

Dodder laughed. "Now pull up your chair and we'll make your plans," he said, straightening his bulky legs under the table. They worked busily with maps and note-books for over an hour. At the end of that time a clerk entered with a bunch of letters and manuscripts. One of the letters was for Hemming. It had been readdressed and forwarded half a dozen times; and after all it proved to be nothing more important than a meandering scrawl from Major O'Grady. "We keep your memory green, dear boy," wrote the major, and much more in the same vein. But a crooked postscript proved of interest. It said that Penthouse was back in Dublin, and was going to the bow-wows at a fearful pace.

Hemming completed his arrangements with the syndicate, and, returning to his hotel, lunched solidly on underdone steak, French fried potatoes, a bottle of ale, a jam tart, and coffee. Love might display clay feet. Wells might be as rude as the devil, and Penthouse might go to the devil, but Herbert Hemming did not intend setting forth on his affairs with an empty stomach. The world was a rotten enough place without that. He consumed three cigarettes over his coffee, in a leisurely manner, and by the time he had left his table by the window the great dining-room was empty. He spent the rest of the day wandering about the city, conquering a desire to write to Miss Travers. He dined at an Italian restaurant, and went early to bed. By nine next morning, he and his traps were aboard a little south-bound steamer.