“Well, yes,” agreed Mr. Peters. “I reckon you might call it that.”
“And then you can send her a copy of the paper, and follow it up in person.”
“A good idea,” commented Billy Magee.
“At first glance, yes,” studied Peters. “But, on the other hand, it would be the death knell of my post-card business, and I’m calculating to go back to Baldpate next summer and take it up again. No, I’m afraid I can’t let it be generally known that I’ve quit living in a shack on the mountain for love of somebody or other.”
“Once more,” smiled Magee, “big business muzzles the press.”
“Not that I ain’t obliged to you for the offer,” added the hermit.
“Of course,” said the girl, “I understand. And I wish you the best of luck — along with a merry Christmas.”
“The same to you,” replied the hermit heartily.
“Miss — er — Miss Rhodes and I will see you again,” predicted Mr. Magee, “next summer at Baldpate Inn.”
The hermit looked at the girl, who turned her face away.
“I hope it’ll turn out that way, I’m sure,” he said. “I’ll let you have a reduction on all post-cards, just for old times’ sake. Now I must find out about the New York trains.”
He melted into the crowd, an odd figure still, his garb in a fashion long forgotten, his clumsily hacked hair brushing the collar of his ancient coat. Magee and the girl found the check room, and after he had been relieved of the burden of his baggage, set out up the main street of Reuton. It was a typical up-state town, deep in the throes of the holiday season. The windows of the stores were green with holly; the faces of the passers-by reflected the excitements of Christmas and of the upheaval in civic politics which were upon them almost together.
“Tell me,” said the girl, “are you glad — at the way it has turned out? Are you glad I was no lady Captain Kidd?”
“It has all turned out — or is about to turn out — beautifully,” Mr. Magee answered. “You may remember that on the veranda of Baldpate Inn I spoke of one summer hotel flirtation that was going to prove more than that. Let me—”
Her laugh interrupted.
“You don’t even know my name.”
“What’s the matter with Evelyn Rhodes?” suggested Magee.
“Nothing. It’s a perfectly good name. But it isn’t mine. I just write under it.”
“I prefer Mary, anyhow,” smiled Billy Magee. “She called you that. It’s Mary.”
“Mary what?”
“You have no idea,” said he, “how immaterial that is.”
They came upon a throng blocking the sidewalk in front of a tall building of stone. The eyes of the throng were on bulletins; it muttered much as they had muttered who gathered in the station.
“The office of the Star,” explained the girl. “The crowd is looking for new excitement. Do you know, for two whole hours this morning we had on exhibition in the window a certain package — a package of money!”
“I think,” smiled Magee, “I’ve seen it somewhere.”
“I think you have. Drayton came and took it from us as soon as he heard. But it was the very best proof we could have offered the people. They like to see for themselves. It’s a passion with them. We’ve done for Cargan forever.”
“Cargan says he will fight.”
“Of course he will,” she replied. “But this will prove Napoleon’s Waterloo. Whether or not he is sent to prison — and perhaps he can escape that, he’s very clever — his power in Reuton is broken. He can’t possibly win at the next election — it comes very soon. I’m so glad. For years our editor has been fighting corruption, in the face of terrible odds and temptations. I’m so glad it’s over now — and the Star has won.”
“Through you,” said Magee softly.
“With — some one — to help,” she smiled. “I must go up-stairs now and find out what new task is set for me.”
Mr. Magee postponed the protest on the tip of his tongue, and, climbing the gloomy stairs that newspapers always affect, they came into the city room of the Star. Though the paper had been long on the street, the excitement of the greatest coup of years still lingered in the place. Magee saw the deferential smiles that greeted the girl, and watched her as she made her way to the city editor’s desk. In a moment she was back at his side.
“I’ve got my assignment,” she smiled ruefully. They descended to the street. “It’s wonderful,” she went on, “how curt a city editor can be with any one who pulls off a good story. The job I’ve got now reminds me of the experience of an old New York reporter who used to work on the Star.”
With difficulty they threaded their way through the crowd, and moved along beside the green-decked windows.
“He was the first man sent out by his paper on Park Row on the Spanish War assignment,” she went on, “and he behaved rather brilliantly, I believe. Well, he came back after the fight was over, all puffed up and important, and they told him the city editor wanted him. ‘They’re going to send me to the Philippines,’ he told me he thought as he went into the presence. When the city editor ordered him to rush down to a two-alarm fire in Houston Street he nearly collapsed. I know how he felt. I feel that way now.”
“What was it — a one-alarm fire?” asked Magee.
“No,” she replied, “a sweet little story about the Christmas toys. I’ve done it to death every Christmas for — three years. Oh, well, I can do it again. But it’ll have to wait until after Mrs. Norton’s lunch.”
She led him into a street where every house was like its neighbor, even to the “Rooms” sign in the windows, and up the steps of one she could have recognized only by counting from the corner. They entered the murky and stereotyped atmosphere of a boarding-house hallway, with its inevitable hat-rack and the uncollected letters of the homeless on a table. Mrs. Norton came breezily forth to meet them.
“Well, Mr. Magee,” she said, “I certainly am glad you’ve came. I’m busy on that lunch now. Dearie, show him into the parlor to wait.”
Mr. Magee was shown in. That rooming-house parlor seemed to moan dismally as it received him. He strolled about and gazed at the objects of art which had at various times accrued to Mrs. Norton’s personality: a steel engraving called Too Late, which depicted an angry father arriving at a church door to find his eloping daughter in the arms of stalwart youth, with the clergy looking on approvingly; another of Mr. John Drew assuming a commanding posture as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew; some ennuied flabby angels riding on the clouds; a child of unhealthy pink clasping lovingly an inflammable dog; on the mantel a miniature ship, under glass, and some lady statuettes whose toilettes slipped down — down.
And, on an easel, the sad portrait of a gentleman, undoubtedly the late lamented Norton. His uninteresting nose appeared to turn up at the constant odor of cookery in which it dwelt; his hair was plastered down over his forehead in a gorgeous abandoned curve such as some of the least sophisticated of Mr. John T. McCutcheon’s gentlemen affect.
Mr. Magee stared round the room and smiled. Was the romance of reality never to resemble the romance of his dreams? Where were the dim lights, where the distant waltz, where the magic of moonlight amid which he was some day to have told a beautiful girl of his love? Hardly in Mrs. Norton’s parlor.
She came and stood in the doorway. Hatless, coatless, smiling, she flooded the place with her beauty. Mr. Magee looked at the flabby angels on the wall, expecting them to hide their faces in shame. But no, they still rode brazenly their unstable clouds.