Ben Ames Williams

Little old Bob Dungan, his coat off, his sleeves rolled to the elbow so that they revealed the red-woolen underwear which he habitually wore, sat at his typewriter in the furthest corner of the noisy City Room and rattled off a cryptic sentence. He wrote:

“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

Now this is not a piece of information calculated to interest more than a baker’s dozen of the half million readers of a metropolitan daily such as that which Bob served. The sentence as a sentence has but one virtue; it contains all of the letters of the alphabet. That is all you can say for it. Nevertheless, having written the words, Bob studied them profoundly, ticking off with his pencil each letter, from A to Izzard, and when he was done, counted those that still remained.

“Nine,” he said, half aloud. And he scratched his head. “Ought to get it under that.” He put a fresh sheet in the typewriter and prepared to try again. To the casual eye of any one who might be watching from across the room, he looked like a very busy man.

As a matter of fact, this was exactly the impression Bob wished to convey. He was anxious to appear busy and indispensable. For little old Bob Dungan was desperately afraid of being fired.

A newspaper staff is built to meet emergencies. That means that, left to itself, it inevitably becomes top-heavy, and on days when news is slack, the City Room is half full of men waiting for an assignment that never comes. When such a condition develops, the veterans in the office know what will follow. Some fine morning, the publisher drifts down stairs and sees the idle men—idle because there is nothing for them to do. And that afternoon, the order comes to cut the staff, cut to the bone.

So faces once familiar begin to disappear. The latest comers are the first to go, and only unusual ability will save them. Then the less efficient among the regulars are dropped, and finally, in drastic cases, those oldtimers who have begun to slow down. There was once a Saturday afternoon when from a single City Room twenty-two men were discharged, and the work went on, Monday morning, just the same. Men who have seemed indispensable disappear—and leave no more of a hole than your finger leaves in a bucket of water. The young reporters take these episodes gaily, as a part of the game; those more experienced accept misfortune with what resignation they can muster. But in the case of a man who has served the paper for ten or fifteen or twenty years, the moment has its black and tragic side.

Old Bob Dungan was wise enough to know the signs. Three weeks before two young reporters had disappeared. A week after, five men were “let go.” Last Saturday seven old friends had stopped at his desk to say goodby. And this morning, his half-admitted apprehensions had been brought to focus. Fear had set its grip on him....

Dade, the City Editor, a driver of a man who was himself driven by a fierce affection for the paper which he served, was standing at Bob’s desk, and they were talking together when Boswell, the publisher, came in from the elevator. And Dade—the man had a kindly, human streak in him which some people never discovered—whispered out of the side of his mouth to Bob:

“Look out, old man. For God’s sake, look busy as hell!”

Then he went across to meet Boswell; and Bob began to write on his machine, at top speed, over and over again:

“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. Now is the time for all good men to come....”

He shifted, after a while, to the other: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Meaningless enough; but Bob hoped, with all his trembling soul, that he was succeeding in looking busy. He was, as has been said, afraid of being fired.

II

Bob could not afford to be fired. He had been a newspaper reporter all his life, and always would be. His salary had always been small, and always would be. His savings were spasmodic, disappearing like snow patches on a sunny day before the occasional emergencies of life, and emergencies insisted on arising. Emergencies do arise, when a man has a family. Just now, for example, his wife was only two days out of hospital, and the bill unpaid.... No, he could not afford the luxury of being fired.

So fear scourged and shook him. It was physical; there were certain muscular and nervous reactions that went with it. His heels, tucked under his chair, felt naked and chilled by the little currents of air that circulated along the floor. His bowels were sick within him, as though there were an actual, ponderable weight in his mid-section. His ears, attuned to what went on in the room behind him, seemed unnaturally enlarged, and there were pricklings in his scalp.

He had known fear before. Such dull periods come to every newspaper office. But Bob had always pulled through, escaped discharge. He had worked at this same desk for a dozen years.... Had come here from the Journal, feeling a little proudly that he was taking an upward step, beginning at last to climb. It had meant more money. Thirty-five dollars a week. He was getting forty, now. So little, yet enough to make a man a coward.

Bob had never been fired from any job. The process of discharge was cloaked, in his thoughts, with an awful mystery. Sometimes men found a note, in a blue envelope, in their mail boxes; sometimes Dade called them to him, spoke to them, explained the necessity which forced him to let them go. They took it variously; defiantly, calmly, humbly, as their natures dictated. But it had never happened to Bob....

He was afraid, these days, to go to his box for mail lest the dreaded note be there; and when Dade stopped at his desk or called him across the room he cringed to his very soul with dread. He was, no doubt of it at all, an arrant and an utter coward.

So he sat, this morning, and wrote, over, and over again:

“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. Now is the....” Or shifted, and tapped off: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” He was still thus occupied when Dade called from his broad desk by the window:

“Bob!”

The little old man looked fearfully around, and Dade beckoned. Bob’s heart dropped into his boots; he was fairly white with fear. Perhaps Boswell had told Dade to let him go....

Nevertheless, he faced the music. Got up and went across the room toward where the City Editor was standing. And he managed a smile. Beat down his panic and smiled.

Dade kept him waiting. The City Editor was giving some instructions to Ingalls, the City Hall man. Bob, his thoughts misted and confused by his own apprehensions, nevertheless heard what Dade was saying, and subconsciously registered and filed it away.

“ ...going to start something,” Dade explained to Ingalls. “Mr. Boswell is interested, so you want to get results. The Building Department has been slack. Not inspectors enough, maybe. Fire Department, too. There were two girls caught in that fire in the South End ten days ago. Got out, I know, but it was luck. We’re going to cover every fire, from now on. Going to watch the fire-escapes and the fire-doors and get the goods on this bunch, if they’ve been falling down. You keep it to yourself, but see what you can dig up. There must be stuff filed, up there. I’ll let you know.... Don’t make any breaks till you hear from me, but keep on the job....”

Bob listened, finding some relief from his own apprehensions in doing so. “Another crusade ...” he thought, idly. Abruptly, Dade dismissed Ingalls and turned to him, and Bob turned pale, then colored with relief when he understood that Dade simply wished to give him an assignment.

“Jack Brenton,” Dade said, in the staccato sentences which were his habit. “We hear his wife has run away from him. He lives out in Hanbridge. Here’s the address. I sent the district man over. He says Brenton’s drunk. Threatened to shoot him. You’ll have to handle him right. Jack’s a bruiser, looking for trouble. Ask him if it’s true his wife’s gone. Ask him who she went with, and why, and what he’s going to do about it. Telephone me.”

Bob nodded. “All right,” he said quickly. “I’ll phone in.” He swung back to his desk for coat and hat, eager to be away, eager to be out of the office and away from present peril.

III

Outside the building, Bob headed for the subway. He had no qualms at the thought of Jack Brenton and his drunken pugnacity. Bob was an old hand, a good leg man, a competent reporter. He had handled angry husbands many times. He could handle Brenton.

Yet he might have been forgiven for being afraid to encounter Jack Brenton. The man was a professional pugilist of some local note, and his record was bad. He had once, by ill luck, killed an opponent in the ring; he was known to possess a sulky temper that flamed to murderous heat, and it was said of him that when he was in his cups, he was better left alone.... He was in his cups this morning. Bob knew this as soon as he heard the other’s sulky shout that answered his knock at the apartment door. The prize-fighter yelled: “Come in!” And Bob went in.

Inside the door there was a little hallway, with a bathroom opening off one side, and a living-room at the end. Brenton came into this passage from the living-room as Bob entered from the hall, and they met face to face. Brenton looked down at the little man; and he asked suspiciously:

“What’re you after?”

“Dungan’s my name,” said Bob pleasantly. “I’m from the Chronicle.”

He saw the other’s scowl deepen. “I said what I’d do.... Next damn reporter came out here. What you want, anyway?”

“I want to ask you a few questions. About your wife....”

The pugilist dropped his hand on little Bob Dungan’s shoulder. His left hand. His right jerked into sight with a revolver; he thrust the muzzle of it into Bob’s face. “You smell that,” he cried, truculently. “I’ll blow your damn head off.”

Bob—laughed. “Why, that’s all right,” he replied. If he had squirmed, struggled, or even if he had been afraid, the other’s drunken anger might have given him strength to shoot. There was very real and deadly peril in the situation. But Bob, unafraid, laughed; and the prize-fighter could see that there was no fear in the little man’s eyes. “That’s all right,” said Bob. “Go ahead.”

Brenton did not shoot. He hesitated uncertainly, his slow wits wavering. And Bob asked sympathetically:

“Did she treat you pretty bad?”

“Bad?” Brenton echoed. “Why, the things she’s done to me—Why, say....”

“That’s tough,” the reporter murmured.

The fighter’s grip on his shoulder relaxed; the big man’s arm slid around Bob’s neck. He became maudlin and unhappy, weeping for sympathy. “Why, you jus’ lemme tell you....” he begged.

“Sure,” Bob agreed. “Tell me all about it. Let’s go in and sit down.”

They went into the living-room. “Y’see, it was this way....” the pugilist began.

IV

When Bob left the prize-fighter, he called the office and reported to Dade. “Dungan speaking,” he said.

“What you got?” Dade asked hurriedly.

“Jack Brenton. Got his story. About his wife. Good stuff....”

Dade interrupted. “Never mind that now,” he directed. “There’s a big fire in that block of lofts on Chambers Street. Hop a taxi and get there quick as you can. Get busy, Bob.”

Bob said crisply: “‘Right!” He heard the receiver click as Dade hung up. Five minutes later he had located a taxi and was racing toward the fire. As he drew near, he saw the column of smoke that rose from the burning building, black against the sky. “Two or three alarms,” he estimated, out of his long experience in such matters. “Lot of girls working in there, too. Probably caught some of them. Damned rat-hole....”

He had not enough cash in his pocket to pay the taxi fare; so he showed the man his badge and said curtly: “Charge Chronicle.” Then he began to worm through the crowd toward the fire. His badge passed him through the fire-lines, into the smother of smoke and the tumult of voices and the throbbing rhythm of the engines. The loft building was five stories high; and when Bob looked up, he saw, as the smoke thinned and left vistas, the red of flames in every window on the upper floors. Beside an empty hose-wagon, he came upon Brett of the Journal, and asked him: “Anybody caught!”

Brett shook his head. “Seven rescues,” he said. “Fire started on the top floor, so they mostly had time to run.”

“Got the names?” Bob asked.

“Jake’s got ’em,” said Brett. Jake was the Chronicle’s police reporter. “He’s gone to telephone them in.”

Bob nodded. Jake was a good man. He would have picked up enough of incident and accident to make a story. The rewrite men in the office would do the rest. His, Bob’s, job was to look for a feature the other men might have overlooked.... And abruptly, he remembered Dade’s instructions to Ingalls that morning. Fire escapes; fire-doors. Were they adequate, on this old trap?

There was an alley beside the burning building. He could work in through there and find out, perhaps.... At the mouth of the alley a policeman halted him. Bob showed his fire badge. The policeman said scornfully: “I don’t give a damn for that. That wall in there is going to fall in a minute.”

Bob laughed. “I was covering fires when you were in the cradle, old man,” he said, and slipped by, into the alley. The officer started to pursue, swore, changed his mind, returned to his post. The alley was not an attractive place to enter. It was full of smoke, and sprinkled with bits of glass that still tinkled down in a steady rain from the shattered windows above; and as he had said, the upper part of the wall had been gnawed by the fire till it was like to fall at any moment.

In spite of this, Bob went in. He was not afraid, and he was not excited, and he was not valorous. He was simply matter of fact. The smoke made him cough, and burned his eyes. Nevertheless he located the fire-escape, where it came zigzagging down the wall. Its ladder swung seven feet above the sidewalk. He got a barrel and climbed upon it and so reached the ladder.

He scaled the ladder to the second floor landing. He found there a blank, iron-sheathed door. Locked. He could not move it. “But it probably opens from the inside,” he reminded himself. “Let’s see.”

There was no window on this floor; he looked up and discovered that from the landing above he could reach a window. Flames were streaming thinly out of windows ten feet above that landing. Nevertheless, Bob did not hesitate. He climbed, straddled the iron rail, kicked in a pane of glass and pushed the sash up. The room within was full of eddying smoke; Bob crawled inside. He wished to reach the hall, test the doors that opened upon the fire-escape from the inside.

Smoke in the room was thick, so he crouched below it and slipped out into the hall. When he reached the door, he found it adequately equipped with patent bolts of the sort that yielded at a tug. He tried them; the door swung open. The bolts, he saw, were recently installed and in good condition.... The open door had created a draft. Smoke, with a hot breath of fire in it, began to pour past him and out through the door.

Fire-escapes all right; doors all right. No story. Time to get out, he decided.

To do so it was necessary to traverse the building. He did this. Bob had seen fires before. Experience and instinct guided him safely. On the stairs he found lines of hose leading up to where a squad of firemen were fighting the fire from within. He followed the hose down and to the front door and so to the street.

The fire, for newspaper purposes, was over. Three alarms, seven rescues, a hundred thousand damage.... Bob telephoned the office. Dade asked: “How about fire-escapes?”

“I looked at them,” Bob said casually. “They’re O. K. Fire-doors all right, too.” Dade said: “Well, you might as well come in.”

V

Bob brushed his clothes and washed his face and hands in a hotel wash-room before he returned to the office. When he came into the City Room, no one paid him any attention. He went to his desk and wrote the story of Jack Brenton’s wife, and handed the manuscript to Dade. The City Editor scanned the pages with swift eyes, said over his shoulder: “Good stuff, Bob.” Then tossed the story to the copy-desk. “Top 7,” he directed. “Good little local story. But you’d better cut it down. Half a column’s enough.”

Bob went back to his desk. He was beginning to feel the reaction; he was somewhat tired. So for a little while he sat idly, doing nothing at all.

Then Boswell, the publisher, came in from the corridor; and Bob saw him, and turned to his typewriter, and inserted a sheet of paper, and began to write. He wrote, over and over again:

The little old reporter wished to appear busy. He was, you see, a good deal of a coward; he was desperately afraid of being fired.