Carmen Ariza Part 174

"I--I do not see, Mr. Ames, that I can do anything," replied the President meditatively.

"Well--will you leave the details to us, and do as we tell you then?"

the financier pursued, taking another tack.

The President hesitated. Then he raised his head. "You say you have proof?" he asked.

"Proof?"

"Yes--about the girl, you--"

"d.a.m.n the girl!" almost shouted Ames. "I've got proofs that will ruin her, and you too--and, by G.o.d, I'll use 'em, if you drive me to it!

You seem to forget that you were elected to do our bidding, my friend!"

The President again lapsed into silence. For a long time he sat staring at the floor. Then he looked up. "It was wonderful," he said, "wonderful the way she faced you, like David before Goliath! There isn't a vestige of fear in her make-up. I--we'll talk this matter over some other time, Mr. Ames," he finished, rising abruptly.

"We'll talk it over now!" roared Ames, his self-control flying to the winds. "I can ruin you--make your administration a laughing-stock--and plunge this country into financial panic! Do you do as I say, or not?"

The President looked the angry man squarely in the eyes. "I do not,"

he answered quietly. "Good morning."

CHAPTER 13

"It's corking! Simply corking!" cried Haynerd, when he and Hitt had finished reading Carmen's report on her first few days in Was.h.i.+ngton.

"Makes a fellow feel as if the best thing Congress could do would be to adjourn for about fifty years, eh? Such freak legislation! But she's a wonder, Hitt! And she's booming the Express to the skies! Say, do you know? she's in love, that girl is! That's why she is so--as the Mexicans say--_simpatico_."

"Eh? In love!" exclaimed Hitt. "Well, not with you, I hope!"

"No, unfortunately," replied Haynerd, a.s.suming a dejected mien, "but with that Rincon fellow--and he a priest! He's got a son down in Cartagena somewhere, and he doesn't write to her either. She's told Sid the whole story, and he's working it up into a book during his odd moments. But, say," turning the conversation again into its original channel, "how much of her report are we going to run? You know, she tried to head us off. Doesn't want to attack Ames. Ha! ha! As if she hadn't already attacked him and strewn him all over the field!"

"We'll have to be careful in our allusions to the President," replied Hitt. "I'll rewrite it myself, so as not to offend her or him. And I--but, by George! her reports are the truth, and they rightfully belong to the people! The Express is the avowed servant of the public! What she finds out belongs to all. I see no reason for concealing a thing. Did I tell you that I had two inquiries from Italian and German papers, asking permission to translate her reports into their own columns?"

"No? Jerusalem! We're becoming famous! Did you wire her to see Gossitch and Mall?"

"Yes, and Logue, as well as others. And I've put dozens of senators and congressmen on our mailing list, including the President himself.

I've prepared letters for each one of them, calling attention to the girl and her unique reports. She certainly writes in a fascinating vein, doesn't she? Meanwhile, she's circulating around down there and advertising us in the best possible manner. We're a success, old man!"

he finished, slapping the city editor roundly upon the back.

"Humph!" growled the latter. "Confine your enthusiasm to words, my friend. Say, what did you do about that liquid food advertis.e.m.e.nt?"

"Discovered that it was beer," replied Hitt, "and turned it firmly down."

"Well, isn't beer a food? Not that we care to advertise it, but--"

Hitt laughed. "When that fellow Claus smoothly tried to convince me that beer was a food, I sent a sample of his stuff to the Iles chemical laboratory for a.n.a.lysis. They reported ninety-four per cent water, four per cent alcohol--defined now as a poisonous drug--and about two per cent of possible food substance. If the beer had been of the first grade there wouldn't have been even the two per cent of solids. You know, I couldn't help thinking of what Carmen said about the beer that is advertised in brown bottles to preserve it from the deleterious effects of light. Light, you know, starts decay in beer.

Well, light, according to Fuller, is 'G.o.d's eldest daughter.' Emerson says it is the first of painters, and that there is nothing so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful. Light destroys fermentation. Thus the light of truth destroys the fermentation which is supposed to const.i.tute the human mind and body. So light tries to purify beer by breaking it up. The brewers have to put it into brown bottles to preserve its poisonous qualities. As Carmen says, beer simply can't stand the light. No evil can stand the light. Remarkable, isn't it?"

"Humph! It's astonis.h.i.+ng that so many so-called reputable papers will take their advertising stuff. It's just as bad as patent medicine ads."

"Yes. And I note that the American public still spend their annual hundred million dollars for patent medicine dope. Most of this is spent by women, who are largely caught by the mail-order trade. I learned of one exposure recently made where it was found that a widely advertised eye wash was composed of borax and water. The cost was somewhere about five cents a gallon, and it sold for a dollar an ounce. Nice little profit of some two hundred and fifty thousand per cent, and all done by the mesmerism of suggestive advertising. Shrewd business, eh? Nice example in morality. Speaking of parasites on society, Ames is not the only one!"

"And yet those fellows howl and threaten us with the boycott because we won't advertise their lies and delusions. It's as bad as ecclesiastical intolerance!"

Carmen spent a week in Was.h.i.+ngton. Then she returned to New York and went directly to Avon. What she did there can only be surmised by a study of her reports to Hitt, who carefully edited them and ran them in the Express. Again, after several days, she journeyed back to Was.h.i.+ngton. Her enthusiasm was boundless; her energy exhaustless; her industry ceaseless; and her persistency doggedly unshakable. In Was.h.i.+ngton she made her way unhindered among those whom she deemed essential to the work which she was doing. Doubtless her ability to do this and to gain an audience with whomsoever she might choose was in great part due to her beauty and charming simplicity, her grace of manner, and her wonderful and fearless innocence, combined with a mentality remarkable for its matured powers. Hitt and Haynerd groaned over her expenses, but promptly met them.

"She's worth it," growled the latter one day. "She's had four different talks with the President! How on earth do you suppose she does it? And how did she get Mall and Logue to take her to dinner and to the theater again and again? And what did she do to induce that doddering old blunderbuss, Gossitch, to tell her what Ames was up to?

I'll bet he made love to her! How do you suppose she found out that Ames was hand in glove with the medical profession, and working tooth and nail to help them secure a National Bureau of Health? Say, do you know what that would do? It would foist allopathy upon every chick and child of us! Make medication, drugging, compulsory! Good heavens! Have we come to that in this supposedly free country? By the way, Hitt, Doctor Morton has been let out of the University. Fired! He says Ames did it because of his a.s.sociation with us. What do you think of that?"

"I think, my friend," replied Hitt, "that it is a very serious matter, and one that impinges heavily upon the rights of every one of us, when a roaring lion like Ames is permitted to run loose through our streets. Can nothing stop him!"

"I've centered my hopes in Carmen," sighed Haynerd. "She's my one last bet. If she can't stop him, then G.o.d himself can't!"

Hitt turned and went into his office. A few moments later he came out again and handed an opened letter to Haynerd. "Some notes she's sent from Was.h.i.+ngton. Mentions the National Bureau of Health project. It hasn't escaped her, you see. Say, will you tell me where she picks up her information?"

"The Lord gives it to her, I guess," said Haynerd, glancing over the letter. "What's this?"

"'Reverend Borwell and Doctor Siler are down here lobbying for the National Bureau of Health bill. Also, Senator Gossitch dropped a remark to me yesterday which makes me believe that he and other Senators have been approached by Tetham with reference to sending an American amba.s.sador to the Vatican. Mr. Ames favors this.'"

Haynerd handed the letter back to Hitt and plunged into the papers on his desk. "Don't say another word to me!" he exclaimed. "This country's going stark, staring mad! We're crazy, every mother's son of us!"

"It's the human mind that is crazy, Ned, because it is wholly without any basis of principle," returned Hitt with a sigh.

"Doctor Siler! I beg your pardon!"

"Eh? Why, Miss Carmen!" exclaimed that worthy person, looking up from the gutter, whither he had hastened after his silk hat which had been knocked off by the encounter with the young girl who had rounded the corner of Ninth street into Pennsylvania avenue and plunged full into him.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Doctor! I was coming from the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, and I guess--"

"Don't mention it, Miss Carmen. It's a privilege to have my hat knocked off by such a radiant creature as you."

"But it was so stupid of me! Dreaming again! And I want to offer my--"

"Look here, Miss Carmen, just offer yourself as my guest at luncheon, will you? That will not only make amends, but place me hopelessly in your debt."

"Indeed I will!" exclaimed the girl heartily. "I was on my way to a restaurant."

"Then come with me. I've got a little place around the corner here that would have made Epicurus sit up nights inditing odes to it."

The girl laughed merrily, and slipped her arm through his. A few minutes later they were seated at a little table in a secluded corner of the doctor's favorite chophouse.

"By the way, I met a friend of yours a few minutes ago," announced the doctor, after they had given their orders. "He was coming out of the White House, and--were you ever in a miniature cyclone? Well, that was Ames! He blew me right off the sidewalk! So angry, he didn't see me.

That's twice to-day I've been sent to the gutter!" He laughed heartily over his experiences, then added significantly: "You and he are both mental cyclones, but producing diametrically opposite effects."