Little Lost Sister Part 14

Then suddenly she crossed the room and threw open the door. The maid, Anna, stood there with a satchel at her feet and Mary's cloak upon her arm. Mary picked up the satchel and turned toward the street door.

"The time for theory alone is over," she said, addressing the company.

"Someone has got to go into action against the wolves."

The door swung behind her and she stepped out into the boulevard.

CHAPTER X

THE ADVENTURES OF A NEWSPAPER STORY

Great cities thrive on sensations. The yellow journal with its blatant enthusiasms and its brazen effrontery finds a congenial habitat there, not because it is brazen, nor even because it is enthusiastic, but because it supplies a community need. The screaming headline is a mental c.o.c.ktail. Bellowed forth by a trombone-lunged newsboy, it crashes against the eye, the ear and the brain simultaneously. It whips up tired nerves.

It keys the crowd to the keen tension necessary for the doing of the city's business. And the crowd likes it. Fed hourly on mental stimulants, it becomes a slave to its newspapers.

On the morning after Mary Randall's dramatic exit from her uncle's mansion Chicago awoke and clutched at the morning papers with all the eagerness of a drunkard reaching for his dram. A hint of a powerful new thrill lay in the half disclosed first pages. Black headings and "freaked" makeup meant but one thing--a big story.

And Chicago was not disappointed. Occupying the place of honor on the first pages of all of the morning sheets was the announcement of a new a.s.sault upon the Vice Trust. To the crowd the name Mary Randall meant nothing. It knew little of her and cared less. But the idea of a young girl, beautiful, socially prominent, immensely wealthy in her own right, declaring war single-handed on a monster so mightily armored and intrenched and so brutally strong as the Vice Trust appealed instantly to the crowd's imagination. In the crowd's thought, at least, the girl became a heroine. And though the man in the street openly wearing an air of cheap cynicism spoke of her as "another crazy reformer" or as a "notoriety-hunting crank," secretly he responded to the enthusiasm of the headline writer who announced her as a "modern Joan of Arc."

Mary had given out the story herself. A simple letter from her to the city editors announcing that she had left her home and all the luxuries that such a home implied and, accompanied only by a maid, had set forth on a war of extermination against the "vice ring" had been sufficient to set every local room in the city in a frenzy. Re-write men and head writers had done the rest. Every newspaper recorded the launching of her adventure with a luxuriance of ill.u.s.tration and a variety of detail that left nothing more to be said on the subject. Mary had counted rather shrewdly on this. She possessed, among her other natural gifts, a keen judgment of news values. She knew, too, the immense power of the press.

By enlisting the agencies of publicity behind her she had multiplied her forces a thousand-fold. At the end of her letter Mary had written a modest appeal to the public. Every newspaper printed it under display type. It read as follows:

"TO THE MEN AND WOMEN OF CHICAGO.

"Our city, which should be the heart of American honor, is in the grip of a hideous System. So quietly and surely has this monster worked that our civic blood is poisoned. It feeds upon youth, innocence and purity--all that we as decent citizens love best. I call upon you all to stand by me now in my fight to kill the White Slave Traffic.

"Mary Randall."

Grove Evans read that appeal through and smiled at its navete. Then he looked across his office to his partner, William Brierly, a younger man with pompadour hair and an habitual air of immense self-satisfaction.

Brierly was reading the same story in another newspaper. He, too, looked up and smiled.

"You know this girl, don't you, Grove?" Brierly asked. "By George, she must be interesting. A new kind of female maniac, eh?"

"You've met her," responded Evans. "She was at the Country Club during trophy match last fall. Carries herself like a queen. I remember your raving about her."

"Ah," Brierly's derisive smile faded. "That girl, eh? Say, I saw her make the ninth hole in three. That girl! Say, look here, Grove," he struck the open paper with his palm, "does she mean this stuff?"

Evans lighted a cigarette before replying. "She sure does," he stated finally. "I was at the Randalls when she delivered her ultimatum and took to the war path. Talk about a jolt! After she left us, you could hear the shades of night falling. For ten minutes we sat there exhibiting all the vivacity of a deaf and dumb man at a Quaker prayer-meeting."

Brierly laughed. "Oh, well," he said. "She'll do what all these suffragettes do--run around in a circle, yell herself tired, then marry some fellow and forget it."

He yawned. Evans turned to the huge safe and got out a heavy packet of papers.

"What are you doing, Grove?" Brierly demanded lazily.

"Nothing," responded Evans curtly. "Just looking over some of our shady leases."

"h.e.l.lo!" said Brierly, getting on his feet. "Are you taking this thing seriously?"

Evans turned with a folded paper in his hand.

"You bet your life I am," he replied. "I know this girl. There's a strain of wild Irish in her and it's my opinion that she's going to raise merry h.e.l.l!"

The dreamer who had visited the Millville b.u.t.ton Works with the owner of the mill lunched with his friend in the city that day. Quite casually, among other items of interest, Mary Randall's adventure came up for discussion.

"I don't know the girl," said the mill-owner, "but her announcement gives me a fairly good mental picture of her."

"What's your picture?" inquired the journalist.

"A rag and a bone and a hank of hair, one of these raving suffragettes.

Since bomb-throwing and burning are not fas.h.i.+onable over here, she's chosen this means of expending her surplus energy."

"My dear friend, you're entirely wrong!"

"What! You've seen her?"

"Oh, no, but I have quite a different mental picture of her. You remember Joan of Arc? Mount her on a charger, hand her a sword of fire and send her forth to fight for Mary Magdalene. That's my idea."

"You've borrowed that from the headline writers," the mill-owner said.

"Not at all. I know the type. A thoughtful young girl, healthy, cultivated and, by the modern miracle, taught how to think. She studies vice conditions in Chicago at first hand and what she sees turns her into a crusader. This girl has spirit. Brought face to face with a great evil, moved by the appeal of helpless womanhood, she throws aside her veneer of false education."

"Uns.e.xed!"

"Yes, if you would say that the crisis in her life uns.e.xed Portia. Or the crisis in France's history uns.e.xed Charlotte Corday."

"You're fond of historical allusions," chided the practical man. "Always the literary man, always the dreamer. This girl is a disturber. She'll unsettle business."

"Ah, there you are. 'Unsettles business.' Did it ever strike you business men that you take yourselves too d.a.m.n seriously? Any movement, any agitation that 'unsettles business' is ipse facto wrong. You business men have had a hand in the martyring of most of the saints and all of the reformers since time began. And, invariably, you are wrong. Why, you're wrong even about yourselves. You firmly believe that the foundations of the country rest upon you. As a matter of fact, not one per cent of you are producers. You're middlemen, profit shavers, parasites."

"My dear fellow," asked his friend, "where would you be if business men--publishers--didn't buy your wares?"

"Ha," answered the writer, "and where would the publishers be if I and others didn't produce the wares to market? It won't do. The reason the newspapers and magazines of this country are so bad is because most of the publishers are not newspaper men and magazine writers, but merely business men."

"Well, I suppose your Joan of Arc will have to have her fling. Then life will swing back to its same old channels and we'll forget her."

"Yes, she will have her fling and perhaps we'll forget her, but life will not swing back to the same old channel. She'll make a new channel, forgotten though she may be, and it will be a better channel."

Captain Shammer of the Eighth police district read Mary Randall's open letter through slowly and carefully. When he had finished he lighted a long black cigar from a box that had been sent him by a world famous confidence man. He smoked thoughtfully for some time. Then he put out a heavy hand and, without looking, pressed a white b.u.t.ton at the side of his desk.

A sharp-eyed young man opened the captain's door.

"Nick," said the captain, "shut that door a minute and come over here."

He pointed to the black newspaper headline.