SMOKE OF BATTLE

This befell during the period that Major Putnam Stone, at the age of sixty-two, held a job as cub reporter on the Evening Press and worked at it until his supply of fine linen and the patience of City Editor Wilbert Devore frazzled out practically together. The episode to which I would here direct attention came to pass in the middle of a particularly hot week in the middle of that particularly hot and grubby summer, at a time when the major was still wearing the last limp survivor of his once adequate stock of frill-bosomed, roll-collared shirts, and when Devore's scanty stock of endurance had already worn perilously near the snapping point.

As may be recalled, Major Stone lived a life of comparative leisure from the day he came out of the Confederate army, a seasoned veteran, until the day he joined the staff of the Evening Press, a rank beginner; and of these two employments one lay a matter of four decades back in a half-forgotten past, while the other was of pressing moment, having to do with Major Stone's enjoyment of his daily bread and other elements of nutrition regarded as essential to the sustenance of human life. In his military career he might have been more or less of a success. Certainly he must have acquitted himself with some measure of personal credit; the rank he had attained in the service and the standing he had subsequently enjoyed among his comrades abundantly testified to that.

As a reporter he was absolutely a total loss; for, as already set forth in some detail, he was hopelessly old-fashioned in thought and speech—hopelessly old-fashioned and pedantic in his style of writing; and since his mind mainly concerned itself with retrospections upon the things that happened between April, 1861, and May, 1865, he very naturally—and very frequently—forgot that to a newspaper reporter every day is a new day and a new beginning, and that yesterday always is or always should be ancient history, let alone the time-tarnished yesterdays of forty-odd years ago. Indeed I doubt whether the major ever comprehended that first commandment of the prentice reporter's catechism.

Devore, himself no grand and glittering success as a newspaper man, nevertheless had mighty little use for the pottering, ponderous old major. Devore did not believe that bricks could be made without straw. He considered it a waste of time and raw material to try. Through that summer he kept the major on the payroll solely because the chief so willed it. But, though he might not discharge the major, at least he could bait him—and bait him Devore did—not, mind you, with words, but with a silent, sublimated contempt more bitter and more biting than any words.

So there, on the occasion in question, the situation stood—the major hanging on tooth and nail to his small job, because he needed most desperately the twelve dollars a week it brought him; the city editor regarding him and all his manifold reportorial sins of omission, commission and remission with a corrosive, speechless venom; and the rest of us in the city room divided in our sympathies as between those two. We sympathized with Devore for having to carry so woful an incompetent upon his small and overworked crew; we sympathized with the kindly, gentle, tiresome old major for his bungling, vain attempts to creditably cover the small and piddling assignments that came his way.

I remember the date mighty well—the third of July. For three days now the Democratic party, in national convention assembled at Chicago, had been in the throes of labor. It had been expected—in fact had been as good as promised—that by ten o'clock that evening the deadlock would melt before a sweetly gushing freshet of party harmony and the head of the presidential ticket would be named, wherefore in the Evening Press shop a late shift had stayed on duty to get out an extra. Back in the press-room the press was dressed. A front page form was made up and ready, all but the space where the name of the nominee would be inserted when the flash came; and in the alley outside a picked squad of newsboys, renowned for speed of the leg and carrying quality of the voice, awaited their wares, meanwhile skylarking under the eye of a circulation manager.

Besides, there was no telling when an arrest might be made in the Bullard murder case—that just by itself would provide ample excuse for an extra. Two days had passed and two nights since the killing of Attorney-at-Law Rodney G. Bullard, and still the killing, to quote a favorite line of the local descriptive writers, “remained shrouded in impenetrable mystery.” If the police force, now busily engaged in running clues into theories and theories into the ground, should by any blind chance of fortune be lucky enough to ascertain the identity and lay hands upon the person of Bullard's assassin, the whole town, regardless of the hour, would rise up out of bed to read the news of it. It was the biggest crime story that town had known for ten years; one of the biggest crime stories it had ever known.In the end our waiting all went for nothing. There were no developments at Central Station or elsewhere in the Bullard case, and at Chicago there was no nomination. At nine-thirty a bulletin came over our leased wire saying that Tammany, having been beaten before the Resolutions Committee, was still battling on the floor for its candidate; so that finally the convention had adjourned until morning, and now the delegates were streaming out of the hall, too tired to cheer and almost too tired to jeer—all of which was sad news to us, because it meant that, instead of taking a holiday on the Fourth, we must work until noon at least, and very likely until later. Down that way the Fourth was not observed with quite the firecrackery and skyrockety enthusiasm that marked its celebration in most of the states to the north of us; nevertheless, a day off was a day off and we were deeply disgusted at the turn affairs had taken. It was almost enough to make a fellow feel friendly toward the Republicans.

Following the tension there was a snapback; a feeling of languor and disappointment possessed us. Devore slammed down the lid of his desk and departed, cursing the luck as he went. Harty, the telegraph editor, and Wilbur, the telegraph operator, rolled down their shirtsleeves and, taking their coats over their arms, departed in company for Tony's place up at the corner, where cool beers were to be found and electric fans, and a business men's lunch served at all hours.

That left in the city room four or five men. Sprawled upon battered chairs and draped over battered desks, they inhaled the smells of rancid greases that floated in to them from the back of the building; they coddled their disappointment to keep it warm and they talked shop. When it comes to talking shop in season and out of season, neither stock actors nor hospital surgeons are worse offenders than newspaper reporters—especially young newspaper reporters, as all these men were except only Major Stone.

It was inevitable that the talk should turn upon the Bullard murder, and that the failure of the police force to find the killer or even to find a likely suspect should be the hinge for its turning. For the moment Ike Webb had the floor, expounding his own pet theories. Ike was a good talker—a mighty good reporter too, let me tell you. Across the room from Ike, tilted back in a chair against the wall, sat the major, looking shabby and a bit forlorn. For a month now shabbiness had been seizing on the major, spreading over him like a mildew. It started first with his shoes, which turned brown and then cracked across the toes, it extended to his hat, which sagged in its brim and became a moldy green in its crown, and now it had touched his coat lapels, his waistcoat front, his collar—his rolling Lord Byron collar—and his sleeve ends.

The major's harmlessly pompous manner was all gone from him that night. Of late his self-assurance had seemed to be fraying and frazzling away, along with those old-timey, full-bosomed shirts of which he had in times gone by been so tremendously proud. It was as though the passing of the one marked the passing of the other—symbolic as you might say. Formerly, too, the major had also excelled mightily in miscellaneous conversation, dominating it by sheer weight of tediousness. Now he sat silent while these youngsters with their unthatched lips—born, most of them, after he reached middle age—babbled the jargon of their trade. He considered a little ravelly strip along one of his cuffs solicitously.

Ike Webb was saying this—that the biggest thing in the whole created world was a big scoop—an exclusive, world-beating, bottled-up scoop of a scoop. Nothing that could possibly come into a reporter's life was one-half so big and so glorious and satisfying. He warmed to his theme:

“Gee! fellows, but wouldn't it be great to get a scoop on a thing like this Bullard murder! Just suppose now that one of us, all by himself, found the person who did the shooting and got a full confession from him, whoever he was; and got the gun that it was done with—got the whole thing—and then turned it loose all over the front page before that big stiff of a Chief Gotlieb down at Central Station knew a thing about it. Beating the police to it would be the best part of that job. That's the way they do things in New York. In New York it's the newspapers that do the real work on big murder mysteries, and the police take their tips from them. Why, some of the best detectives in New York are reporters. Look what they did in that Guldensuppe case! Look at what they've done in half a dozen other big cases! Down here we just follow along, like sheep, behind a bunch of fat-necked cops, taking their leavings. Up there a paper turns a man loose, with an unlimited expense account and all the time he needs, and tells him to go to it. That's the right way too!”

By that the others knew Ike Webb was thinking of what Vogel had told him. Vogel was a gifted but admittedly erratic genius from the metropolis who had come upon us as angels sometimes do—unawares—two weeks before, with cinders in his ears and the grime of a dusty right-of-way upon his collar. He had worked for the sheet two weeks and then, on a Saturday night, had borrowed what sums of small change he could and under cover of friendly night had moved on to parts unknown, leaving us dazzled by the careless, somewhat patronizing brilliance of his manner, and stuffed to our earlobes with tales of the splendid, adventurous, bohemian lives that newspaper men in New York lived.

“Well, I know this,” put in little Pinky Gilfoil, who was red-headed, red-freckled and red-tempered: “I'd give my right leg to pull off that Bullard story as a scoop. No, not my right leg—a reporter needs all the legs he's got; but I'd give my right arm and throw in an eye for good measure. It would be the making of a reporter in this town—he'd have 'em all eating out of his hand after that.” He licked his lips. Even the bare thought of the thing tasted pretty good to Pinky.

“Now you're whistling!” chimed Ike Webb. “The fellow who single-handed got that tale would have a job on this paper as long as he lived. The chief would just naturally have to hand him more money. In New York, though, he'd get a big cash bonus besides, an award they call it up there. I'd go anywhere and do anything and take any kind of a chance to land that story as an exclusive—yes, or any other big story.”

To all this the major, it appeared, had been listening, for now he spoke up in a pretty fair imitation of his old impressive manner:

“But, young gentlemen—pardon me—do you seriously think—any of you—that any honorarium, however large, should or could be sufficient temptation to induce one in your—in our profession—to give utterance in print to a matter that he had learned, let us say, in confidence? And suppose also that by printing it he brought suffering or disgrace upon innocent parties. Unless one felt that he was serving the best ends of society—unless one, in short, were actuated by the highest of human motives—could one afford to do such a thing? And, under any circumstances, could one violate a trust—could one violate the common obligation of a gentleman's rules of deportment——”

“Major,” broke in Ike Webb earnestly, “the way I look at it, a reporter can't afford too many of the luxuries you're mentioning. His duty, it seems to me, is to his paper first and the rest of the world afterward. His paper ought to be his mother and his father and all his family. If he gets a big scoop—no matter how he gets it or where he gets it—he ought to be able to figure out some way of getting it into print. It's not alone what he owes his paper—it's what he owes himself. Personally I wouldn't be interested for a minute in bringing the person that killed Rod Bullard to justice—that's not the point. He was a pretty shady person—Rod Bullard. By all accounts he got what was coming to him. It's the story itself that I'd want.”

“Say, listen here, major,” put in Pinky Gilfoil, suddenly possessed of a strengthening argument; “I reckon back yonder in the Civil War, when you all got the smoke of battle in your noses, you didn't stop to consider that you were about to make a large crop of widows and orphans and cause suffering to a whole slue of innocent people that'd never done you any harm! You didn't stop then, did you? I'll bet you didn't—you just sailed in! It was your duty—the right thing to do—and you just went and did it. 'War is hell!' Sherman said. Well, so is newspaper work hell—in a way. And smelling out a big story ought to be the same to a reporter that the smoke of battle is to a soldier. That's right—I'll leave it to any fellow here if that ain't right!” he wound up, forgetting in his enthusiasm to be grammatical.

It was an unfortunate simile to be making and Pinky should have known better, for at Pinky's last words the old major's mild eye widened and, expanding himself, he brought his chair legs down to the floor with a thump.

“Ah, yes!” he said, and his voice took on still more of its old ringing quality. “Speaking of battles, I am just reminded, young gentlemen, that tomorrow is the anniversary of the fall of Vicksburg. Though Northern-born, General Pemberton was a gallant officer—none of our own Southern leaders was more gallant—but it has always seemed to me that his defense of Vicksburg was marked by a series of the most lamentable and disastrous mistakes. If you care to listen, I will explain further.” And he squared himself forward, with one short, plump hand raised, ready to tick off his points against Pemberton upon his fingers.

By experience dearly bought at the expense of our ear-drums, the members of the Evening Press staff knew what that meant; for as you already know, the major's conversational specialty was the Civil War—it and its campaigns. Describing it, he made even war a commonplace and a tiresome topic. In his hands an account of the hardest fought battle became a tremendously uninteresting thing. He weeded out all the thrills and in their places planted hedges of dusty, deadly dry statistics. When the major started on the war it was time to be going. One by one the youngsters got up and slipped out. Presently the major, booming away like a bell buoy, became aware that his audience had dwindled. Only Ike Webb remained, and Ike was getting upon his feet and reaching for the peg where his coat swung.

“I'm sorry to leave you right in the middle of your story, major; but, honestly, I've got to be going,” apologized Ike. “Good night, and don't forget this, major”—Ike had halted at the door—“when a big story comes your way freeze to it with both hands and slam it across the plate as a scoop. Do that and you can give 'em all the laugh. Good night again—see you in the morning, major!”

He grinned to himself as he turned away. The major was a mighty decent, tender-hearted little old scout, a gentleman by birth and breeding, even if he was down and out and dog-poor. It was a shame that Devore kept him skittering round on little picayunish jobs—running errands, that was really what it was. Still, at that, the old major was no reporter and never would be. He wouldn't know a big story if he ran into it on the big road—it would have to burst right in his face before he recognized it. And even then the chances were that he wouldn't know what to do with it. It was enough to make a fellow grin.

Deserted by the last of his youthful compatriots—which was what he himself generally called them—the major lingered a moment in heavy thought. He glanced about the cluttered city room, now suddenly grown large and empty. This was the theater where his own little drama of unfitness and failure and private mortification had been staged and acted. It had run nearly a month now, and a month is a long run for a small tragedy in a newspaper office or anywhere else. He shook his head. He shook it as though he were trying to shake it clear of a job lot of old-fashioned, antiquated ideals—as though he were trying to make room for newer, more useful, more modern conceptions. Then he settled his aged and infirm slouch hat more firmly upon his round-domed skull, straightened his shoulders and stumped out.

At the second turning up the street from the office an observant onlooker might have noticed a small, an almost imperceptible change in the old man's bearing. There was not a sneaky bone in the major's body—he walked as he thought and as he talked, in straight lines; but before he turned the corner he glanced up and down the empty sidewalk in a quick, furtive fashion, and after he had swung into the side street a trifle of the steam seemed gone from his stiff-spined, hard-heeled gait. It ceased to be a strut; it became a plod.

The street he had now entered was a badly lighted street, with long stretches of murkiness between small patches of gas-lamped brilliance. By day the houses that walled it would have showed themselves as shabby and gone to seed—the sort of houses that second cousins move into after first families have moved out. Two-thirds of the way along the block the major turned in at a sagged gate. He traversed a short walk of seamed and decrepit flagging, where tufts of rank grass sprouted between the fractures in the limestone slabs, and mounted the front porch of a house that had cheap boarding house written all over it.

When the major opened the front door the tepid smell that gushed out to greet him was the smell of a cheap boarding house too, if you know what I mean—a spilt-kerosene, boiled-cabbage, dust-in-the-corners smell. Once upon a time the oilcloth upon the floor of the entry way had exhibited a vivid and violent pattern of green octagons upon a red and yellow background, but that had been in some far distant day of its youth and freshness. Now it was worn to a scaly, crumbly color of nothing at all, and it was frayed into fringes at the door and in places scuffed clear through, so that the knot-holes of the naked planking showed like staring eyes.

Standing just inside the hall, the major glanced down first at the floor and then up to where in a pendent nub a pinprick of light like a captive lightning-bug flickered up and down feebly as the air pumped through the pipe; and out of his chest the major fetched a small sigh. It was a sigh of resignation, but it had loneliness in it too. Well, it was a come-down, after all these peaceful and congenial years spent among the marble-columned, red-plushed glories of the old Gaunt House, to be living in this place.

The major had been here now almost a month. Very quietly, almost secretly, he had come hither when he found that by no amount of stretching could his pay as a reporter on the Evening Press be made to cover the cost of living as he had been accustomed to live prior to that disastrous day when the major waked up in the morning to find that all his inherited investments had vanished over night—and, vanishing so, had taken with them the small but sufficient income that had always been ample for his needs.

In that month the major had seen but one or two of his fellow lodgers, slouching forms that passed him by in the gloom of the half-lighted hallways or on the creaky stairs. His landlady he saw but once a week—on Saturday, which was settlement day. She was a forlorn, gray creature, half blind, and she felt her way about gropingly. By the droop in her spine and by the corners of her lips, permanently puckered from holding pins in her mouth, a close observer would have guessed that she had been a seamstress before her eyes gave out on her and she took to keeping lodgers. Of the character of the establishment the innocent old major knew nothing; he knew that it was cheap and that it was on a quiet by-street, and for his purposes that was sufficient.

He heaved another small sigh and passed slowly up the worn steps of the stairwell until he came to the top of the house. His room was on the attic floor, the middle room of the three that lined the bare hall on one side. The door-knob was broken off; only its iron center remained. His fingers slipped as he fumbled for a purchase upon the metal core; but finally, after two attempts, he gripped it and it turned, admitting him into the darkness of a stuffy interior. The major made haste to open the one small window before he lit the single gas jet. Its guttery flare exposed a bed, with a thin mattress and a skimpy cover, shoved close up under the sloping wall; a sprained chair on its last legs; an old horsehide trunk; a shaky washstand of cheap yellow pine, garnished forth with an ewer and a basin; a limp, frayed towel; and a minute segment of pale pink soap.

Major Stone was in the act of removing his coat when he became aware of a certain sound, occurring at quick intervals. In the posture of a plump and mature robin he cocked his head on one side to listen; and now he remembered that he had heard the same sound the night before, and the night before that. These times, though, he had heard it intermittently and dimly, as he tossed about half awake and half asleep, trying to accommodate his elderly bones to the irregularities of his hot and uncomfortable bed. But now he heard it more plainly, and at once he recognized it for what it was—the sound of a woman crying; a wrenching succession of deep, racking gulps, and in between them little moaning, panting breaths, as of utter exhaustion—a sound such as might be distilled from the very dregs of a grief too great to be borne.

He looked about him, his eyes and ears searching for further explanation of this. He had it. There was a door set in the cross-wall of his room—a door bolted and nailed up. It had a transom over it and against the dirty glass of the transom a light was reflected, and through the door and the transom the sound came. The person in trouble, whoever it might be, was in that next room—and that person was a woman and she was in dire distress. There was a compelling note in her sobbing.

Undecided, Major Stone stood a minute rubbing his nose pensively with a small forefinger; then the resolution to act fastened upon him. He slipped his coat back on, smoothed down his thin mane of reddish gray hair with his hands, stepped out into the hall and rapped delicately with a knuckled finger upon the door of the next room. There was no answer, so he rapped a little harder; and at that a sob checked itself and broke off chokingly in the throat that uttered it. From within a voice came. It was a shaken, tear-drained voice—flat and uncultivated.

“Who's there?” The major cleared his throat. “Is it a woman—or a man?” demanded the unseen speaker without waiting for an answer to the first question.

“It is a gentleman,” began the major—“a gentleman who——”

“Come on in!” she bade him—“the door ain't latched.”

And at that the major turned the knob and looked into a room that was practically a counterpart of his own, except that, instead of a trunk, a cheap imitation-leather suitcase stood upright on the floor, its sides bulging and strained from over-packing. Upon the bed, fully dressed, was stretched a woman—or, rather, a girl. Her head was just rising from the crumpled pillow and her eyes, red-rimmed and widely distended, stared full into his.

What she saw, as she sat up, was a short, elderly man with a solicitous, gentle face; the coat sleeves were turned back off his wrists and his linen shirt jutted out between the unfastened upper buttons and buttonholes of his waistcoat. What the major saw was a girl of perhaps twenty or maybe twenty-two—in her present state it was hard to guess—with hunched-in shoulders and dyed, stringy hair falling in a streaky disarray down over her face like unraveled hemp.

It was her face that told her story. Upon the drawn cheeks and the drooped, woful lips there was no dabbing of cosmetics now; the professional smile, painted, pitiable and betraying, was lacking from the characterless mouth, yet the major—sweet-minded, clean-living old man though he was—knew at a glance what manner of woman he had found here in this lodging house. It was the face of a woman who never intentionally does any evil and yet rarely gets a chance to do any good—a weak, indecisive, commonplace face; and every line in it was a line of least resistance.

That then was what these two saw in each other as they stared a moment across the intervening space. It was the girl who took the initiative.“Are you one of the police?” Then instantly on the heels of the query: “No; I know better'n that—you ain't no police!”

Her voice was unmusical, vulgar and husky from much weeping. Magically, though, she had checked her sobbing to an occasional hard gulp that clicked down in her throat.

“No, ma'am,” said Major Stone, with a grave and respectful courtesy, “I am not connected with the police department. I am a professional man—associated at this time with the practice of journalism. I have the apartment or chamber adjoining yours and, accidentally overhearing a member of the opposite sex in seeming distress, I took it upon myself to offer any assistance that might lie within my power. If I am intruding I will withdraw.”

“No,” she said; “it ain't no intrusion. I wisht, please, sir, you'd come in jest a minute anyway. I feel like I jest got to talk to somebody a minute. I'm sorry, though, if I disturbed you by my cryin'—but I jest couldn't help it. Last night and the night before—that was the first night I come here—I cried all night purty near; but I kept my head in the bedclothes. But tonight, after it got dark up here and me layin' here all alone, I felt 's if I couldn't stand it no longer. Honest, I like to died! Right this minute I'm almost plum' distracted.”

The major advanced a step.“I assure you I deeply regret to learn of your unhappiness,” he said. “If you desire it I will be only too glad to summon our worthy landlady, Miss—Miss——” he paused.

“Miss La Mode,” she said, divining—“Blanche La Mode—that's my name. I come from Indianapolis, Indiana. But please, mister, don't call that there woman. I don't want to see her. For a while I didn't think I wanted to see nobody, and yit I've known all along, from the very first, that sooner or later I'd jest naturally have to talk to somebody. I knew I'd jest have to!” she repeated with a kind of weak intensity. “And it might jest as well be you as anybody, I guess.”

She sat up on the side of the bed, dangling her feet, and subconsciously the major took in fuller details of her attire—the cheap white slippers with rickety, worn-down high heels; the sleazy stockings; the over-decorated skirt of shabby blue cloth; the soiled and rumpled waist of coarse lace, gaping away from the scrawny neck, where the fastenings had pulled awry. Looped about her throat and dangling down on her flat breast, where they heaved up and down with her breathing, was a double string of pearls that would have been worth ten thousand dollars had they been genuine pearls. A hand which was big-knuckled and thin held a small, moist wad of handkerchief. About her there was something unmistakably bucolic, and yet she was town-branded, too, flesh and soul. Major Stone bowed with the ceremonious detail that was a part of him.

“My name, ma'am, is Stone—Major Putnam Stone, at your service,” he told her.

“Yes, sir,” she said, seeming not to catch either his name or his title. “Well, mister, I'm goin' to tell you something that'll maybe surprise you. I ain't goin' to ast you not to tell anybody, 'cause I guess you will anyhow, sooner or later; and it don't make much difference if you do. But seems's if I can't hold in no longer. I guess maybe I'll feel easier in my own mind when I git it all told. Shet that door—jest close it—the lock is broke—and set down in that chair, please, sir.”

The major closed the latchless door and took the one tottery chair. The girl remained where she was, on the side of her bed, her slippered feet dangling, her eyes fixed on a spot where there was a three-cornered break in the dirty-gray plastering.

“You know about Rodney G. Bullard, the lawyer, don't you?—about him bein' found shot day before yistiddy evenin' in the mouth of that alley?” she asked.

“Yes, ma'am,” he said. “Though I was not personally acquainted with the man himself, I am familiar with the circumstances you mention.”

“Well,” she said, with a sort of jerk behind each word, “it was me that done it!”

“I beg your pardon,” he said, half doubting whether he had heard aright, “but what was it you said you did?”

“Shot him!” she answered—“I was the one that shot him—with this thing here.” She reached one hand under the pillow and drew out a short-barreled, stubby revolver and extended it to him. Mechanically he took it, and thereafter for a space he held it in his hands. The girl went straight on, pouring out her sentences with a driven, desperate eagerness.

“I didn't mean to do it, though—God knows I didn't mean to do it! He treated me mighty sorry—it was lowdown and mean all the way through, the way he done me—but I didn't mean him no real harm. I was only aimin' to skeer him into doin' the right thing by me. It was accidental-like—it really was, mister! In all my life I ain't never intentionally done nobody any harm. And yit it seems like somebody's forever and a day imposin' on me!” She quavered with the puny passion of her protest against the world that had bruised and beaten her as with rods.

Shocked, stunned, the major sat in a daze, making little clucking sounds in his throat. For once in his conversational life he couldn't think of the right words to say. He fumbled the short pistol in his hands.

“I'm goin' to tell you the whole story, jest like it was,” she went on in her flat drone; and the words she spoke seemed to come to him from a long way off. “That there Rodney Bullard he tricked me somethin' shameful. He come to the town where I was livin' to make a speech in a political race, and we got acquainted and he made up to me. I was workin' in a hotel there—one of the dinin' room help. That was two years ago this comin' September. Well, the next day, when he left, he got me to come 'long with him. He said he'd look after me. I liked him some then and he talked mighty big about what he was goin' to do for me; so I come with him. He told me that I could be his——” She hesitated.

“His amanuensis, perhaps,” suggested the old man.

“Which?” she said. “No; it wasn't that way—he didn't say nothin' about marryin' me and I didn't expect him to. He told me that I should be his girl—that was all; but he didn't keep his word—no, sir; right from the very first he broke his word to me! It wasn't more'n a month after I got here before he quit comin' to see me at all. Well, after that I stayed a spell longer at the house where I was livin' and then I went to another house—Vic Magner's. You know who she is, I reckin?”

The major half nodded, half shook his head.

“By reputation only I know the person in question,” he answered a bit stiffly.

“Well,” she went on, “there ain't so much more to tell. I've been sick lately—I had a right hard spell. I ain't got my strength all back yit. I was laid up three weeks, and last Monday, when I was up and jest barely able to crawl round, Vic Magner, she come to me and told me that I'd have to git out unless I could git somebody to stand good for my board. I owed her for three weeks already and I didn't have but nine dollars to my name. I offered her that, but she said she wanted it all or nothin'. I think she wanted to git shet of me anyway. Mister, I was mighty weak and discouraged—I was so! I didn't know what to do.

“I hadn't seen Rod Bullard for goin' on more than a year, but he was the only one I could think of; so I slipped out of the house and went acrost the street to a grocery store where there was a pay station, and I called him up on the telephone and ast him to help me out a little. It wasn't no more than right that he should, was it, seein' as he was responsible for my comin' here? Besides, if it hadn't been for him in the first place I wouldn't never 'a' got into all that trouble. I talked with him over the telephone at his office and he said he'd do somethin' for me. He said he'd send me some money that evenin' or else he'd bring it round himself. But he didn't do neither one. And Vic Magner, she kept on doggin' after me for her board money.

“I telephoned him again the next mornin'; but before I could say more'n two words to him he got mad and told me to quit botherin' him, and he rung off. That was day before yistiddy. When I got back to the house Vic Magner come to me, and I couldn't give her no satisfaction. So about six o'clock in the evenin' she made me pack up and git out. I didn't have nowheres to go and only eight dollars and ninety cents left—I'd spent a dime telephoning so, before I got out I took and wrote Rod Bullard a note, and when I got outside I give a little nigger boy fifteen cents to take it to him. I told him in the note I was out in the street, without nowheres to go, and that if he didn't meet me that night and do somethin' for me I'd jest have to come to his office. I said for him to meet me at eight o'clock at the mouth of Grayson Street Alley. That give me two hours to wait. I walked round and round, packin' my baggage.

“Then I come by a pawnstore and seen a lot of pistols in the window, and I went in and I bought one for two dollars and a half. The pawnstore man he throwed in the shells. But I wasn't aimin' to hurt Rod Bullard—jest to skeer him. I was thinkin' some of killin' myself too. Then I walked round some more till I was plum' wore out.

“When eight o'clock come I was waitin' where I said, and purty soon he come along. As soon as he saw me standin' there in the shadder he bulged up to me. He was mighty mad. He called me out of my name and said I didn't have no claims on him—a whole lot more like that—and said he didn't purpose to be bothered with me phonin' him and writin' him notes and callin' on him for money. I said somethin' back, and then he made like he was goin' to hit me with his fist. I'd had that pistol in my hand all the time, holdin' it behind my skirt. And I pulled it and I pointed it like I was goin' to shoot—jest to skeer him, though, and make him do the right thing by me. I jest simply pointed it at him—that's all. I didn't have no idea it would go off without you pulled the hammer back first!

“Then it happened! It went off right in my hand. And he said to me: 'Now you've done it!'—jest like that. He walked away from me about ten feet, and started to lean up against a tree, and then he fell down right smack on his face. And I grabbed up my baggage and run away. I wasn't sorry about him. I ain't been sorry about him a minute since—ain't that funny? But I was awful skeered!”

Rocking her body back and forth from the hips, she put her hands up to her face. Major Stone stared at her, his mind in a twisting eddy of confused thoughts. Perhaps it was the clearest possible betrayal of his utter unfitness for his new vocation in life that not until that very moment when the girl had halted her narrative did it come to him—and it came then with a sudden jolt—that here he had one of those monumental news stories for which young Gilfoil or young Webb would be willing to barter his right arm and throw in an eye for good measure. It was a scoop, as those young fellows had called it—an exclusive confession of a big crime—a thing that would mean much to any paper and to any reporter who brought it to his paper. It would transform a failure into a conspicuous success. It would put more money into a pay envelope. And he had it all! Sheer luck had brought it to him and flung it into his lap.

Nor was he under any actual pledge of secrecy. This girl had told it to him freely, of her own volition. It was not in the nature of her to keep her secret. She had told it to him, a stranger; she would tell it to other strangers—or else somebody would betray her. And surely this sickly, slack-twisted little wanton would be better off inside the strong arm of the law than outside it? No jury of Southern men would convict her of murder—the thought was incredible. She would be kindly dealt with. In one illuminating flash the major divined that these would have been the inevitable conclusions of any one of those ambitious young men at the office. He bent forward.

“What did you do then, ma'am?” he asked.

“I didn't know what to do,” she said, dropping her hands into her lap. “I run till I couldn't run no more, and then I walked and walked and walked. I reckin I must 'a' walked ten miles. And then, when I was jest about to drop, I come past this house. There was a light burnin' on the porch and I could make out to read the sign on the door, and it said Lodgers Taken.

“So I walked in and rung the bell, and when the woman came I said I'd jest got here from the country and wanted a room. She charged me two dollars a week, in advance; and I paid her two dollars down—and she showed me the way up here.

“I've been here ever since, except twice when I slipped out to buy me somethin' to eat at a grocery store and to git some newspapers. At first I figgered the police would be a-comin' after me; but they didn't—there wasn't nobody at all seen the shootin', I reckin. And I was skeered Vic Magner might tell on me; but I guess she didn't want to run no risk of gittin' in trouble herself—that Captain Brennan, of the Second Precinct, he's been threatenin' to run her out of town the first good chance he got. And there wasn't none of the other girls there that knowed I ever knew Rod Bullard. So, you see, I ain't been arrested yit.

“Layin' here yistiddy all day, with nothin' to do but think and cry, I made up my mind I'd kill myself. I tried to do it. I took that there pistol out and I put it up to my head and I said to myself that all I had to do was jest to pull on that trigger thing and it wouldn't hurt me but a secont—and maybe not that long. But I couldn't do it, mister—I jest couldn't do it at all. It seemed like I wanted to die, and yit I wanted to live too. All my life I've been jest that way—first thinkin' about doin' one thing and then another, and hardly ever doin' either one of 'em.

“Here on this bed tonight I got to thinkin' if I could jest tell somebody about it that maybe after that I'd feel easier in my mind. And right that very minute you come and knocked on the door, and I knowed it was a sign—I knowed you was the one for me to tell it to. And so I've done it, and already I think I feel a little bit easier in my mind. And so that's all, mister. But I wisht please you'd take that pistol away with you when you go—I don't never want to see it again as long as I live.”

She paused, huddling herself in a heap upon the bed. The major's short arm made a gesture toward the cheap suitcase.

“I observe,” he said, “that your portmanteau is packed as if for a journey. Were you thinking of leaving, may I ask?”

“My which?” she said. “Oh, you mean my baggage! Yes; I ain't never unpacked it since I come here. I was aimin' to go back to my home—I got a stepsister livin' there and she might take me in—only after payin' for this room I ain't got quite enough money to take me there; and now I don't know as I want to go, either. If I kin git my strength back I might stay on here—I kind of like city life. Or I might go up to Cincinnati. A girl that I used to know here is livin' there now and she wrote to me a couple of times, and I know her address—it was backed on the envelope. Still, I ain't sure—my plans ain't all made yit. Sometimes I think I'll give myself up, but most generally I think I won't. I've got to do somethin' purty soon though, one way or another, because I ain't got but a little over three dollars left out of what I had.”

She sank her head in the pillow wearily, with her face turned away from him. The major stood up. Into his side coat pocket he slipped the revolver that had snuffed out the late and unsavory Rodney Bullard's light of life, and from his trousers pocket he slowly drew forth his supply of ready money. He had three silver dollars, one quarter, one dime, and a nickel—three-forty in all. Contemplating the disks of metal in the palm of his hand, he did a quick sum in mental arithmetic. This was Thursday night now. Saturday afternoon at two he would draw a pay envelope containing twelve dollars. Meantime he must eat. Well, if he stinted himself closely a dollar might be stretched to bridge the gap until Saturday. The major had learned a good deal about the noble art of stinting these last few weeks.

On the coverlet alongside the girl he softly piled two of the silver dollars and the forty cents in change. Then, after a momentary hesitation, he put down the third silver dollar, gathered up the forty cents, slid it gently into his pocket and started for the door, the loose planks creaking under his tread. At the threshold he halted.

“Good night, Miss La Mode,” he said. “I trust your night's repose may be restful and refreshing to you, ma'am.”

She lifted her face from the pillow and spoke, without turning to look at him.

“Mister,” she said, “I've told you the whole truth about that thing and I ain't goin' to lie to you about anythin' else. I didn't come from Indianapolis, Indiana, like I told you. My home is in Swainboro', this state—a little town. You might know where it is? And my real name ain't La Mode, neither. I taken it out of a book—the La Mode part—and I always did think Blanche was an awful sweet name for a girl. But my real name is Gussie Stammer. Good night, mister. I'm much obliged to you fer listenin', and I ain't goin' to disturb you no more with my cryin' if I kin help it.”

As the major gently closed her door behind him he heard her give a long, sleepy sigh, like a tired child. Back in his own room he glanced about him, meanwhile feeling himself over for writing material. He found in his pockets a pencil and a couple of old letters, whereas he knew he needed a big sheaf of copy paper for the story he had to write. Anyway, there was no place here to do an extended piece of writing—no desk and no comfortable chair. The office would be a much better place.

The office was only a matter of two or three blocks away. The negro watchman would be there; he stayed on duty all night. Using the corner of his washstand for a desk, the major set down his notes—names, places, details, dates—upon the backs of his two letters. This done, he settled his ancient hat on his head, picked up his cane, and in another minute was tiptoeing down the stairs and out the front doorway. Once outside, his tread took on the brisk emphasis of one set upon an important task and in a hurry to do it.

Ten minutes later Major Stone sat at his desk in the empty city room of the Evening Press. Except for Henry, the old black night watchman, there was no other person in the building anywhere. Just over his head an incandescent bulb blazed, bringing out in strong relief the major's intent old face, mullioned with crisscross lines. A cedar pencil, newly sharpened, was in his fingers; under his right hand was a block of clean copy paper. His notes lay in front of him, the little stubnosed pistol serving as a paper weight to hold the two wrinkled envelopes flat. Through the loop of the trigger guard the words, Gussie Stammer, alias Blanche La Mode, showed. Everything was ready.

The major hesitated, though. He readjusted his paper and fidgeted his pencil. He scratched his head and pulled at the little tuft of goatee under his lower lip. Like many a more experienced author, Major Stone was having trouble getting under way. He had his own ideas about a fitting introductory paragraph. Coming along, he had thought up a full sonorous one, with a biblical injunction touching on the wages of sin embodied in it; but, on the other hand, there was to be borne in mind the daily-dinned injunction of Devore that every important news item should begin with a sentence in which the whole story was summed up. Finally Major Stone made a beginning. He covered nearly a sheet of paper.

Then, becoming suddenly dissatisfied with it, he tore up what he had written and started all over again, only to repeat the same operation. Two salty drops rolled down his face and fell upon the paper, and instantly little twin blistered blobs like tearmarks appeared on its clear surface. They were not tears, though—they were drops of sweat wrung from the major's brow by the pains of creation. Again he poised his pencil and again he halted it in the air—he needed inspiration. His gaze rested absently upon the pistol; absently he picked it up and began examining it.

It was a cheap, rusted, second-hand thing, poorly made, but no doubt deadly enough at close range. He unbreeched it and spun the cylinder with his thumb and spilled the contents into his palm—four loaded shells, suety and slick with grease, and one that had been recently fired; and it was discolored and flattened a trifle. Each of the four loaded shells had a small cap like a little round staring eye set in the exact center of its flanged butt-end, but the eye of the fifth shell was punched in. He turned the empty weapon in his hands, steadying its mechanism, and as he did so a scent of burnt powder, stale and dead, came to him out of the fouled muzzle. He wrinkled his nose and sniffed at it.

It had been many a long day since the major had had that smell in his nostrils—many a long, long day. But there had been a time when it was familiar enough to him. Even now it brought the clamoring memories of that far distant time back to him, fresh and vivid. It stimulated his imagination, quickening his mind with big thoughts. It recalled those four years when he had fought for a principle, and had kept on fighting even when the substance of the thing he fought for was gone and there remained but the empty husks. It recalled those last few hopeless months when the forlorn hope had become indeed a lost cause; when the forty cents he now carried in his pocket would have seemed a fortune; when the sorry house where he lodged now would have seemed a palace; when, without prospect or hope of reward or victory, he had piled risk upon risk, had piled sacrifice upon sacrifice, and through it all had borne it all without whimper or complaint—fighting the good fight like a soldier, keeping the faith like a gentleman. It was the Smoke of Battle!

The major had his inspiration now, right enough. He knew just what he would write; knew just how he would write it. He laid down the pistol and the shells and squared off and straightway began writing. For two hours nearly he wrote away steadily, rarely changing or erasing a word, stopping only to repoint the lead of his pencil. Methodically as a machine he covered sheet after sheet with his fine old-fashioned script. Never for one instant did he hesitate or falter.

Just before one o'clock he finished. The completed manuscript, each page of the twenty-odd pages properly numbered, lay in a neat pile before him. He scooped up the pistol shells and stored them in an inner breast pocket of his coat; then he opened a drawer, slipped the emptied revolver well back under a riffle of papers and clippings and closed the drawer and locked it. His notes he tore into squares, and those squares into smaller squares—and so on until the fragments would tear no finer, but fluttered out between his fingers in a small white shower like stage snow.

He shoved his completed narrative back under the roll-top of Devore's desk, where the city editor would see it the very first thing when he came to work; and as he straightened up with a little grunt of satisfaction and stretched his arms out the last of his fine-linen shirts, with a rending sound, ripped down the plaited front, from collarband almost to waistline.

He eyed the ruined bosom with a regretful stare, plucking at the gaping tear with his graphite-dusted fingers and shaking his head mournfully. Yet as he stepped out into the street, bound for his lodgings, he jarred his heels down upon the sidewalk with the brisk, snapping gait of a man who has tackled a hard job and has done it well, and is satisfied with the way he has done it.

Under a large black head the major's story was printed in the Fourth of July edition of the Evening Press. It ran full two columns and lapped over into a third column. It was an exhaustive—and exhausting—account of the Fall of Vicksburg.

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