“Great stuff!” cried Boyd, excitedly. “Kuroki crosses the Yalu tonight and attacks. Oh, we won’t do a thing to the sheets that make up with Addison’s essays, real estate transfers, and bowling scores!”
“Mr. Vesey,” said the m. e., with his jollying-which-you-should-regard-as-a-favor manner, “you have cast a serious reflection upon the literary standards of the paper that employs you. You have assisted materially in giving us the biggest ‘beat’ of the year. I will let you know in a day or two whether you are to be discharged or retained at a larger salary. Somebody send Ames to me.”
Ames was the kingpin, the snowy-petaled marguerite, the star-bright looloo of the rewrite men. He saw attempted murder in the pains of green-apple colic, cyclones in the summer zephyr, lost children in every top-spinning urchin, an uprising of the downtrodden masses in every hurling of a derelict potato at a passing automobile. When not rewriting, Ames sat on the porch of his Brooklyn villa playing checkers with his ten-year-old son.
Ames and the “war editor” shut themselves in a room. There was a map in there stuck full of little pins that represented armies and divisions. Their fingers had been itching for days to move those pins along the crooked line of the Yalu. They did so now; and in words of fire Ames translated Calloway’s brief message into a front page masterpiece that set the world talking. He told of the secret councils of the Japanese officers; gave Kuroki’s flaming speeches in full; counted the cavalry and infantry to a man and a horse; described the quick and silent building of the bridge at Suikauchen, across which the Midado’s legions were hurled upon the surprised Zassulitch, whose troops were widely scattered along the river. And the battle! — well, you know what Ames can do with a battle if you give him just one smell of smoke for a foundation. And in the same story, with seemingly supernatural knowledge, he gleefully scored the most profound and ponderous paper in England for the false and misleading account of the intended movements of the Japanese First Army printed in its issue of the same date.
Only one error was made; and that was the fault of the cable operator at Wi-ju. Calloway pointed it out after he came back. The word “great” in his code should have been “gage” and its complemental words “of battle.” But it went to Ames “conditions white,” and of course he took that to mean snow. His description of the Japanese army struggling through the snowstorm, blinded by whirling flakes, was thrillingly vivid. The artists turned out some effective illustrations that made a hit as pictures of the artillery dragging their guns through the drifts. But, as the attack was made on the first day of May, the “conditions white” excited some amusement. But it made no difference to the Enterprise, anyway.
It was wonderful. And Calloway was wonderful in having made the new censor believe that his jargon of words meant no more than a complaint of the dearth of news and a petition for more expense money. And Vesey was wonderful. And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices them do part.
On the second day following, the city editor halted at Vesey’s desk where the reporter was writing the story of a man who had broken his leg by falling into a coal-hole — Ames having failed to find a murder motive in it.
“The old man says your salary is to be raised to twenty a week,” said Scott.
“All right,” said Vesey. “Every little helps. Say — Mr. Scott, which would you say — ‘We can state without fear of successful contradiction,’ or, ‘On the whole it can be safely asserted’?”