It was nearly midnight when Bobby Wilkins’ chauffeur reported over the telephone to Jimmy Martin and McClintock, who had been keeping anxious vigil in the office all night.
“There ain’t a sign of him,” he said hurriedly. “I waited right where you told me to wait, and if he’d have been anywhere within a couple of miles I could have seen him after it got dark. The moon has been shining bright for a long time, and I had a pair of glasses with me. I’m afraid it’s all up with him if he hasn’t landed some place else along the coast. It’s tough for all of us if anything’s gone wrong, ain’t it?”
The chauffeur was instructed to make another trip to the selected landing place and to stay there until dawn when relief was promised. Jimmy was pale and over-wrought when he hung up the telephone receiver and turned to McClintock.
“If he had landed any place else,” he remarked, “he’d have made every effort to get to a phone. He’d know we’d be worried. Gee, Mac, supposin’ somethin’s happened to ’em. If there has little old Robert B. Remorse’ll be my side-partner for life. He told me he’d be prepared for all emergencies and he’s there with the nerve, but maybe they ran into a squall or something. Why’d I ever think of this stunt? I’ve got too much imagination, Mac, I’ve got to teach it to lie down and behave.”
The two sat up all night, smoking incessantly and discussing the variety of fates which they fancied might have overtaken the adventuresome Bobby Wilkins and his distinguished fellow passenger. Jimmy called up one of the newspaper offices every fifteen minutes for news, but there wasn’t any worth mentioning. The dirigible had not been sighted by any ship with which the navy wireless had been able to get into communication and the half dozen destroyers sent out to search for it were reported to be without definite information.
The entire country seethed with the story in the morning. The Associated Press had carried fifteen hundred words into every newspaper office in every city of importance from coast to coast and the big dailies in Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston had three and four column stories from their metropolitan correspondents, liberally illustrated with pictures of the Hon. Betty, who was one of the most photographed women of her time. McClintock, who had no knowledge of Jimmy’s promise to keep Bobby Wilkins’ real name out of print, had blurted it out to a group of reporters in the evening and the salient facts concerning the modest wearer of three war medals were incorporated in all of the accounts. Robert Wilkins, Sr., forgot that he was a mere business machine, wiped a few tears out of the corners of his eyes, looked tenderly at a picture of a curly headed boy he always kept in one of the drawers of his desk and started east on a special train.
The total haul in the New York morning papers was seventy-six columns of solid reading matter and thirty-eight photographic illustrations. Every angle of the story was covered in great detail and in addition to the main narrative there were extended biographical sketches of the Hon. Betty and of Bobby Wilkins. There were cabled stories from London concerning the festive career of the former and containing an expression of deep concern from the British premier. There were also eulogies of the one time ace from personages no less important than the American commander in chief in France and the generalissimo of the allied armies. All in all it was the most spectacular “feature story” in years and the greatest achievement in the history of American press agentry. McClintock admitted that much when the first editions came in.
“Jimmy,” he said, “it’s a dog-goned shame that you’ve got to lie low and never get credit for this. Still you’ve got company. I was reading in the paper the other day that there’s a well defined rumor that the more or less celebrated covenant of the well known League of Nations was finally framed up by a clerk in the British foreign office. You can drop over later on and take a little drink with him and cry it all out on each other’s shoulder.”
Jimmy’s only response was a mournful attempt at a smile. He lit another cigarette, jerked out of his chair and began to swear softly as he walked up and down the room. He made a vicious lunge with his foot at a waste-basket and kicked it through the door into the next office. Then he took off his soft hat, rolled it into a lump and slammed it down on the floor with a wide, sweeping gesture.
“I don’t mind that so much,” he said testily. “After landin’ a smear like that, though, I’d kinda like to have a good time with myself for a few minutes. I’d kinda like to throw a few assorted flowers up in the air and let ’em drop on me, but I’m so gosh-darned worried about what’s actually happened that I can’t even have that much fun.”
His anxiety increased as the day wore on and the early editions of the evening papers which played up the story even more extensively than the “mornings” failed to buoy him up. There was still no word of the N-24, and navy department officials in Washington were reported to be gravely alarmed at the possibilities.
At noon the British embassy gave out the announcement that “a distinguished person” had cabled for detailed information and had begged to be kept in hourly touch with the developments. Flaming head-lines carried the legend “King Anxious About Lost Dirigible.” Upon reading this three rival publicity promoters who had suspected the presence of the fine Italian hand of Jimmy Martin in the proceedings from the beginning and who had foregathered for lunch in their favorite club, simultaneously started out on a joint jamboree that was to become a memorable minor historical incident in the turgid annals of Broadway. It offered the only means of escaping from the tragic feeling of profound and passionate envy that surged up from the very depths of their beings.
At 3 o’clock as Jimmy, red-eyed and haggard, nodded at his desk between telephone calls, a messenger boy dropped a cablegram in front of him. He tore it open and gazed bewilderingly at this cryptic message:
HAMILTON, BERMUDA.
JAMES T. MARTIN.
JOLLYLAND PARK,
CONEY ISLAND, N. Y.
COME ON IN—THE WATER’S FINE—GIVE
MY REGARDS TO LOLITA, BUT CAN’T
SAY I’M SORRY IT HAPPENED AS YET.
BOBBY WILKINS.
Jimmy gave a second look at the heading and rushed into the next office where McClintock was snoring sonorously on a sofa. He shook the manager savagely and waved the cablegram in front of his eyes.
“All’s right with the world, Mac,” he shouted joyously. “They’ve landed in Bermuda. Can you beat that fresh son-of-a-gun doin’ a thing like that? What’s the big idea, I wonder?”
McClintock grabbed the message and read it hurriedly.
“I guess maybe he’s mailing the answer,” he remarked. “It beats me. You’d better get a wire off to him asking for particulars.”
The shrill summons of the telephone brought Jimmy back into his own office the next moment. The voice of his friend, Lindsay, the day desk man of the Associated Press, came over the wire in crisp, staccato sentences.
“Got some news for you,” he said. “It’s going to make this morning’s headlines look sick. Here’s the way our first bulletin reads:
“‘Washington, D. C.—July 7—The British ambassador has just given out the following cablegram received from the Governor-General of the Bermuda Islands:—‘Please announce to press the marriage this morning in St. John’s chapel, Hamilton, of the Hon. Elizabeth Ardsley Ashley, eldest daughter of Lord Norbonne, Bart., of London, England, to Robert Benjamin Wilkins, Jr., only son of Robert Benjamin Wilkins, Sr., of Chicago, Ill., U.S.A. The ceremony was entirely informal.’”
“I’m ordering three thousand words from our Bermuda correspondent,” went on Lindsay, “and I’m having London break the news gently to dear, old dad. I suppose if I came down on Sunday with the wife and the kiddies you could slip us into a few of your side-shows.”
“Say,” responded Jimmy exultingly, “you’re goin’ to get a life pass good for each and every attraction within the big enclosure.”
As he hung up the telephone and swung around in his swivel chair the door leading into the hall opened ever so gently and the pale and tear-stained face of Lolita Murphy peered through the opening. Jimmy gazed at her, open-eyed, as she came slowly into the room. He noticed that she had a crumpled bit of paper in her hand.
“Jimmy,” she said timidly, as she held out her arms in appealing suppliance, “I’m just a—just a foolish small town kid. I didn’t understand—I didn’t understand.”
Jimmy, in a daze, took the paper which she held towards him. It was another cablegram. He smoothed it out and the peace that surpasseth understanding settled down upon him as he read these words:
HAMILTON, BERMUDA.
LOLITA MURPHY,
JOLLYLAND PARK,
CONEY ISLAND, N. Y.
WON’T IT EASE YOUR DISAPPOINTMENT
A LITTLE TO KNOW THAT THE
MAD IMPULSIVE THING I DID YESTERDAY
AND THE RASH ACT I HAVE JUST
COMMITTED IN THE CHAPEL HAVE
TRANSFORMED ME INTO QUITE THE
HAPPIEST WOMAN ALIVE—BOBBY HAS
TOLD ME ALL ABOUT EVERYTHING AND
HE FEARS THAT YOU MAY THINK YOUR
FRIEND MR. MARTIN HAD A FINGER IN
THE PIE—HE HAD NOTHING TO DO
WITH IT, MY DEAR—IT WAS JUST FATE.
OUR BEST REGARDS TO YOU BOTH.
ELIZABETH ASHLEY WILKINS.
McClintock, coming into the room just then, tip-toed out again and closed the door softly behind him, thus proving himself to be a gentleman of singular tact and discretion.