The Making of Bobby Burnit

Brown heard them in silence, and with great solemnity conducted them across the hall to Jolter, who also heard them in silence and conducted them into the adjoining room to Bobby. Here Jolter stood back and eyed young Mr. Burnit with great interest as his two experienced veterans and his ambitious youngster poured forth their several tales of woe. Bobby, as it became him to be, was much disturbed.

“How’s the circulation of the Bulletin?” he asked of Jolter.

“Five times what it ever was in its history,” responded Jolter.

“Do you suppose we can hold it?”

“Possibly.”

“How much does a scoop amount to?”

“Well,” confessed Jolter, with his eyes twinkling, “I hate to tell you before the boys, but my own opinion is that we know it and the Chronicle knows it and Stone knows it, but day after to-morrow the public couldn’t tell you on its sacred oath whether it read the first account of the murder in the Bulletin or in the Chronicle.”

Bobby heaved a sigh of relief.

“I always had the impression that a ‘beat’ meant the death, cortège and cremation of the newspaper that fell behind in the race,” he smiled. “Boys, I’m afraid you’ll have to stand it for a while. Do the best you can and get beaten as little as possible. By the way, Jolter, I want to see you a minute,” and the mournful delegation of three, no whit less mournful because they had been assured that they would not be held accountable for being scooped, filed out.

“What’s the connection,” demanded Bobby, the minute they were alone, “between the police department and Sam Stone?”

“Money!” replied Jolter. “Chief of Police Cooley is in reality chief collector. The police graft is one of the richest Stone has. The rake-off from saloons that are supposed to close at one and from crooked gambling joints and illegal resorts of various kinds, amounts, I suppose, to not less than ten to fifteen thousand dollars a week. Of course, the patrolmen get some, but the bulk of it goes to Cooley, who was appointed by Stone, and the biggest slice of all goes to the Boss.”

“Go after Cooley,” said Bobby. Then suddenly he struck his fist upon the desk. “Great Heavens, man!” he exclaimed. “At the end of every avenue and street and alley that I turn down with the Bulletin I find an open sewer.”

“The town is pretty well supplied,” admitted Jolter. “How do you feel now about your policy?”

“Pretty well staggered,” confessed Bobby; “but we’re going through with the thing just the same.”

“It’s a man’s-size job,” declared Jolter; “but if you get away with it the Bulletin will be the best-paying piece of newspaper property west of New York.”

“Not the way the advertising’s going,” said Bobby, shaking his head and consulting a list on his desk. “Where has Stone a hold on the dry-goods firm of Rolands and Crawford?”

“They built out circular show-windows, all around their big block, and these extend illegally upon two feet of the sidewalk.”

“And how about the Ebony Jewel Coal Company?”

“They have been practically allowed to close up Second Street, from Water to Canal, for a dump.”

Bobby sighed hopelessly.

“We can’t fight everybody in town,” he complained.

“Yes, but we can!” exclaimed Jolter with a sudden fire that surprised Bobby, since it was the first the managing editor displayed. “Don’t weaken, Burnit! I’m with you in this thing, heart and soul! If we can hold out until next election we will sweep everything before us.”

“We will hold out!” declared Bobby.

“I am so sure of it that I’ll stand treat,” assented Mr. Jolter with vast enthusiasm, and over an old oak table, in a quiet place, Mr. Jolter and Mr. Burnit, having found the sand in each other’s craws, cemented a pretty strong liking.

CHAPTER XXV

AN EXCITING GAME OF TIT FOR TAT WITH HIRED THUGS

The Bulletin, continuing its warfare upon Stone and every one who supported him, hit upon names that had never before been mentioned but in terms of the highest respect, and divers and sundry complacent gentlemen who attended church quite regularly began to look for a cyclone cellar. They were compromised with Stone and they could not placate Bobby. The four banks that had withdrawn their advertisements, after a hasty conference with Stone put them back again the first day their names were mentioned. The business department of the Bulletin cheerfully accepted those advertisements at the increased rate justified by the Bulletin’s increased circulation; but the editorial department just as cheerfully kept castigating the erring conservators of the public money, and the advertisements disappeared again.

Bobby’s days now were beset from a hundred quarters with agonized appeals to change his policy. This man and that man and the other man high in commercial and social and political circles came to him with all sorts of pressure, and even Payne Winthrop and Nick Allstyne, two of his particular cronies of the Idlers’, not being able to catch him at the club any more, came up to his office.

“This won’t do, old man,” protested Payne; “we’re missing you at billiards and bridge whist, but your refusal to take part in the coming polo tourney was the last straw. You’re getting to be a regular plebe.”

“I am a plebe,” admitted Bobby. “What’s the use to deny it? My father was a plebe. He came off the farm with no earthly possessions more valuable than the patches on his trousers. I am one generation from the soil, and since I have turned over a furrow or two, just plain earth smells good to me.”

Both of Bobby’s friends laughed. They liked him too well to take him seriously in this.

“But really,” said Nick, returning to the attack, “the boys at the club were talking over the thing and think this rather bad form, this sort of a fight you’re making. You’re bound to become involved in a nasty controversy.”

“Yes?” inquired Bobby pleasantly. “Watch me become worse involved. More than that, I think I shall come down to the Idlers’, when I get things straightened out here, organize a club league and make you fellows march with banners and torch-lights.”

This being a more hilarious joke than the other the boys laughed quite politely, though Payne Winthrop grew immediately serious again.

“But we can’t lose you, Bobby,” he insisted. “We want you to quit this sort of business and come back again to the old crowd. There are so few of us left, you know, that we’re getting lonesome. Stan Rogers is getting up a glorious hunt and he wants us all to come up to his lodge for a month at least. You should be tired of this by now, anyhow.”

“Not a bit of it,” declared Bobby.

“Oh, of course, you have your money involved,” admitted Payne, “and you must play it through on that account; but I’ll tell you: if you do want to sell I know where I could find a buyer for you at a profit.”

Bobby turned on him like a flash.

“Look here, Payne,” said he. “Where is your interest in this?”

“My interest?” repeated Payne blankly.

“Yes, your interest. What have you to gain by having me sell out?”

“Why, really, Bobby – ” began Payne, thinking to temporize.

“You’re here for that purpose, and must tell me why,” insisted Bobby sternly, tapping his finger on the desk.

“Well, if you must know,” stammered Payne, taken out of himself by sheer force of Bobby’s manner, “my respected and revered – ”

“I see,” said Bobby.

“The – the pater is thinking of entering politics next year, and he rather wants an organ.”

“And Nick, where’s yours?”

“Well,” confessed Nick, with no more force of reservation than had Payne when mastery was used upon him, “mother’s city property and mine, you know, contains some rather tumbledown buildings that are really good for a number of years yet, but which adverse municipal government might – might depreciate in value.”

“Just a minute,” said Bobby, and he sent for Jolter.

“Ben,” he asked, “do you know anything about Mr. Adam Winthrop’s political aspirations?”

“I understand he’s being groomed for governor,” said Jolter.

“Meet his son, Mr. Jolter – Mr. Payne Winthrop. Also Mr. Nick Allstyne. I suppose Mr. Winthrop is to run on Stone’s ticket?” continued Bobby, breaking in upon the formalities as quickly as possible.

“Certainly.”

“Payne,” said Bobby, “if your father wants to talk with me about the Bulletin he must come himself. Jolter, do you know where the Allstyne properties are?”

Jolter looked at Nick and Nick colored.

“That’s rather a blunt question, under the circumstances, Mr. Burnit,” said Jolter, “but I don’t see why it shouldn’t be answered as bluntly. It’s a row of two blocks on the most notorious street of the town, frame shacks that are likely to be the start of a holocaust, any windy night, which will sweep the entire down-town district. They should have been condemned years ago.”

“Nick,” said Bobby, “I’ll give you one month to dispose of that property, because after that length of time I’m going after it.”

This was but a sample. Bobby had at last become suspicious, and as old John Burnit had shrewdly observed in one of his letters: “It hurts to acquire suspiciousness, but it is quite necessary; only don’t overdo it.”

Bobby, however, was in a field where suspiciousness could scarcely be overdone. When any man came to protest or to use influence on Bobby in his fight, Bobby took the bull by the horns, called for Jolter, who was a mine of information upon local affairs, and promptly found out the reason for that man’s interest; whereupon he either warned him off or attacked him, and made an average of ten good, healthy enemies a day. He scared Adam Winthrop out of the political race entirely, he made the Allstynes tear down their fire-traps and erect better-paying and consequently more desirable tenements, and he had De Graff and the other involved bankers “staggering in circles and hoarsely barking,” as “Bugs” Roach put it.

So far, Bobby had been subjected to no personal annoyances, but on the day after his first attack on the chief of police he began to be arrested for breaking the speed laws, and fined the limit, even though he drove his car but eight miles an hour, while his news carriers and his employees were “pinched” upon the most trivial pretexts. Libel suits were brought wherever a merchant or an official had a record clear enough to risk such procedure, and three of these suits were decided against him; whereupon Bobby, finding the money chain which bound certain of the judges to Sam Stone, promptly attacked these members of the judiciary and appealed his cases.

His very name became a red rag to every member of Stone’s crowd; but up to this point no violence had been offered him. One night, however, as he was driving his own car homeward, men on the watch for him stepped out of an alley mouth two blocks above the Burnit residence and strewed the street thickly with sharp-pointed coil springs. One of these caught a tire, and Bobby, always on the alert for the first sign of such accidents, brought his car to a sudden stop, reached down for his tire-wrench and jumped out. Just as he stooped over to examine the tire, some instinct warned him, and he turned quickly to find three men coming upon him from the alley, the nearest one with an uplifted slung-shot. It was with just a glance from the corner of his eye as he turned that Bobby caught the import of the figure towering above him, and then his fine athletic training came in good stead. With a sidewise spring he was out of the sphere of that descending blow, and, swinging with his heavy wrench, caught the fellow a smash upon the temple which laid him unconscious. Before the two other men had time to think, he was upon them and gave one a broken shoulder-blade. The other escaped. There had been no word from any of the three men which might lead to an explanation of this attack, but Bobby needed no explanation; he divined at once the source from which it came, and in the morning he sent for Biff Bates.

“Biff,” said he, “I spoke once about securing some thugs to act as a counter-irritant against Stone, but I have neglected it. How long will it take to get hold of some?”

“Ten minutes, if I wait till dark,” replied Biff. “I can go down to the Blue Star, and for ten iron men apiece can get you as fine a bunch of yeggs as ever beat out a cripple’s brains with his own wooden leg.”

Bobby smiled.

“I don’t want them to go quite that far,” he objected. “Are they men you can depend upon not to sell out to Stone?”

“Just one way,” replied Biff. “The choice line of murderers that hang out down around the levee are half of them sore on Stone, anyhow; but they’re afraid of him, and the only way you can use them is to give ’em enough to get ’em out of town. For ten a throw you can buy them body and soul.”

“I’ll take about four, to start on duty to-night, and stay on duty till they accomplish what I want done,” and Bobby detailed his plan to Biff.

Stone had one peculiarity. Knowing that he had enemies, and those among the most reckless class in the world, he seldom allowed himself to be caught alone; but every night he held counsel with some of his followers at a certain respectable beer-garden where, in the summer-time, a long table in a quiet, half-screened corner was reserved for him and his followers, and in the winter a back room was given up for the same purpose. Here Stone transacted all the real business of his local organization, drinking beer, reviving strange-looking callers, and confining his own remarks to a grunted yes or no, or a brief direction. Every night at about nine-thirty he rose, yawned, and, unattended, walked back through the beer-garden to the alley, where he stood for some five minutes. This was his retreat for uninterrupted thought, and when he came back from it he had the day’s developments summed up and the necessary course of action resolved upon.

On the second night after the attempted assault upon Bobby he had no sooner closed the alley door behind him than a man sprang upon him from either side, a heavy hand was placed over his mouth, and he was dragged to the ground, where a third brawny thug straddled his chest and showed him a long knife.

“See it?” demanded the man as he passed the blade before Stone’s eyes. “It’s hungry. You let ’em clip my brother in stir for a three-stretch when you could have saved him with a grunt, and if I wasn’t workin’ under orders, in half an hour they’d have you on slab six with ice packed around you and a sheet over you. But we’re under orders. We’re part of the reform committee, we are,” and all three of them laughed silently, “and there’s a string of us longer than the Christmas bread-line, all crazy for a piece of this getaway coin. And here’s the little message I got to give you. This time you’re to go free. Next time you’re to have your head beat off. This thuggin’ of peaceable citizens has got to be stopped; see?”

A low whistle from a man stationed at the mouth of the alley interrupted the speech which the man with the knife was enjoying so much, and he sprang from the chest of Stone, who had been struggling vainly all this time. As the man sprang up and started to run, he suddenly whirled and gave Stone a vicious kick upon the hip, and as Stone rose, another man kicked him in the ribs. All three of them ran, and Stone, scrambling to his feet with difficulty, whipped his revolver from his pocket and snapped it. Long disused, however, the trigger stuck, but he took after them on foot in spite of the pain of the two fearful kicks that he had received. Instead of darting straight out of the alley, the men turned in at a small gate at the side of a narrow building on the corner, and slammed the gate behind them. He could hear the drop of the wooden bolt. He knew perfectly that entrance. It was to the littered back yard of a cheap saloon, at the side of which ran a narrow passageway to the street beyond, where street-cars passed every half-minute.

Just as he came furiously up to the gate a policeman darted in at the alley mouth, and, catching the glint of Stone’s revolver, whipped his own. He ran quite fearlessly to Stone, and with a dextrous blow upon the wrist sent the revolver spinning.

“You’re under arrest,” said he.

For just one second he covered his man, then his arm dropped and his jaw opened in astonishment.

“Why, it’s Stone!” he exclaimed.

“Yes, damn you, it’s Stone!” screamed the Boss, livid with fury, and overcome with anger he dealt the policeman a staggering blow in the face. “You damned flat-foot, I’ll teach you to notice who you put your hands on! Give me that badge!”

White-faced and with trembling fingers, and with a trickle of blood starting slowly from a cut upon his cheek, the man unfastened his badge.

“Now, go back to Cooley and tell him I broke you,” Stone ordered, and turned on his heel.

By the time he reached the back door of the beer-garden he was limping most painfully, but when he rejoined his crowd he said nothing of the incident. In the brief time that it had taken him to go from the alley mouth to that table he had divined the significance of the whole thing. For the first time in his career he knew himself to be a systematically marked man, as he had systematically marked others; and he was not beyond reason. Thereafter, Bobby Burnit was in no more jeopardy from hired thugs, and for a solid year he kept up his fight, with plenty of material to last him for still another twelvemonth. It was a year which improved him in many ways, but Aunt Constance Elliston objected to the improvement.

“Bobby, they are spoiling you,” she complained. “They’re taking your suavity away from you, and you’re acquiring grim, hard lines around your mouth.”

“They’re making him,” declared Agnes, looking fondly across at the firm face and into the clear, unwavering eyes.

Bobby answered the look of Agnes with one that needed no words to interpret, and laughed at Aunt Constance.

“I suppose they are spoiling me,” he confessed, “and I’m glad of it. I’m glad, above all, that I’m losing the sort of suavity which led me to smile and tell a man politely to take it, when he reached his hand into my pocket for my money.”

“You’ll do,” agreed Uncle Dan. “When you took hold of the Bulletin, your best friends only gave you two months, But are you making any money?”

Bobby’s face clouded.

“Spending it like water. We have practically no advertising, and a larger circulation than I want. We lose money on every copy of the paper that we sell.”

Uncle Dan shook his head.

“Is there a chance that you will ever get it back?” he asked.

“Bobby’s so used to failure that he doesn’t mind,” interjected Aunt Constance.

“Mind!” exclaimed Bobby. “I never minded it so much in my life as I do now. The Bulletin must win. I’m bound that it shall win! If we come out ahead in our fight against Stone I’ll get all my advertising back, and I’ll keep my circulation, which makes advertising rates.”

The telephone bell rang in the study adjoining the dining-room, and Bobby, who had been more or less distrait all evening, half rose from his chair. In a moment more the maid informed them that the call was for Mr. Burnit. In the study they could hear his voice, excited and exultant. He returned as delighted as a school-boy.

“Now I can tell you something,” he announced. “Within five minutes the Bulletin will have exclusive extras on the street, announcing that the legislature has just appointed a committee to investigate municipal affairs throughout the state. That means this town. I have spent ten thousand dollars in lobbying that measure through, and charged it all to improvements’ on the Bulletin. Sounds like I had joined the ranks of the ‘boodlers,’ don’t it? Well, I don’t give a cooky for ethics so long as I know I’m right. I’d have been a simp, as Biff Bates calls it, to go among that crowd of hungry law jugglers with kind words and the ten commandments. I’m not using crossbows against cannon, and as a result I’m winning. I got my measure through, and now I think we’ll put Stone and his crew of freebooters on the grill, with some extra-hot coals for my friend De Graff and the other saintly sinners who have been playing into Stone’s hands. I have been working a year for this, and the entire politics of this town, with wide-reaching results in the state, is disrupted.”

“You selfish boy,” chided Aunt Constance. “You have been here with us for more than an hour, expecting this all the time, and have not breathed one word of it to us. Don’t you trust anybody any more?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Bobby easily; “but only when it is necessary.”

Agnes smiled across at him in calm content. She had but very little to say now. She was in that blissful happiness that comes to any woman when the man most in her mind is reaping his meed of success from a long and hard-fought battle.

“Spoken like your father, Bobby,” laughed Uncle Dan. “You’re coming to look more and more like him every day. You talk like him and act like him. You have the same snap of your jaws. Your father, however, never dabbled in politics. He always despised it, and I see you’re bound to be knee-deep in it.”

“My father would have succeeded in politics,” said Bobby confidently, “as he succeeded in everything else, after he once got started. I have his confession in writing, however, that he made a few fool mistakes himself along at first. As for politics, I am in it knee-deep, and I’m going to elect my own slate next fall.”

“Another reform party, of course,” suggested Uncle Dan with a smile.

“Not for Bobby,” replied that decided young gentleman. “I am forming an affiliation with Cal Lewis.”

“Cal Lewis!” exclaimed Uncle Dan aghast. Then he closed his eyes and laughed softly. “As notorious in his way as Sam Stone himself. Why, Bobby, that’s fighting fire with gasolene.”

“It’s setting a thief to catch a thief. You must remember that for fifteen years Cal hasn’t had any of the pie except in a minor way, and all this time he’s been fighting Stone tooth and toe-nail. The late reform movement, which failed so lamentably to carry out its gaudy promises after it had won, left him entirely out of its calculations, and Lewis actually joined with Stone in overturning it. I propose to use Lewis’ knowledge of political machinery, but in my own way. As a matter of fact, I have already engaged him and put him on salary; a good, stiff one, too. His business is to organize my political machine. I’m going to have a slate of clean men, who will not only conduct the business of this county and city with probity but with discretion, and I do not mind telling you that my candidate for mayor is Chalmers.”

Agnes gave a little cry of delight, and even Aunt Constance clapped her hands lightly, for Chalmers, a young lawyer of excellent social connections, was a prime favorite with the Ellistons, and in the business he had transacted for the Burnit estate Bobby had found in him sterling qualities.

“Chalmers is a good man,” agreed Uncle Dan, “though he is young, and practically without political influence; but, if you can make him mayor, I predict a brilliant political future for him.”

“He will have it,” said Bobby confidently, “for I intend to make him the attorney for the investigating committee, and through his work I expect to have not less than a hundred thousand dollars of stolen money turned back into the city and county treasuries.”

As Bobby announced this he rose mechanically, and, still absorbed in the details of his big fight, walked out into the hall. It was not until he had his coat on and his hat in his hand that he came to himself; and with the deepest confusion found that he had been about to walk out without making any adieus whatever.

“Why, where are you going?” inquired Agnes, as he came back into the drawing-room.

He laughed sheepishly.

“Why,” he explained, “ever since I received that telephone message I have been seeing before me the Bulletin extra that they are throwing on the street right now, and I forgot everything else. I’ll simply have to go down and hold a copy of it in my hands.”

“You’re just a big boy,” laughed Aunt Constance. “Will you ever grow up?”

“I hope not,” declared Agnes, and taking his arm she strolled with him to the door in perfect peace and confidence.

CHAPTER XXVI

MR. STONE LEAVES BOBBY A PARTING COMMISSION AND A LEFT-HANDED BLESSING