Montague started to walk. He had no idea where he went; his mind was in a whirl, and he was lost to everything about him. He must have spent a couple of hours wandering about the park and the streets of the city; when at last he stopped and looked about him, he was on a lighted thoroughfare, and a big clock in front of a jewellery store was pointing to the hour of two. He looked around. Immediately across the street was a building which he recognised as the office of the Express; and in a flash he thought of Bates. “Come in after the paper has gone to press,” the latter had said.
He went in and entered the elevator.
“I want to see Mr. Bates, a reporter,” he said.
“City-room,” said the elevator man; “eleventh floor.”
Montague confronted a very cross and sleepy-looking office-boy. “Is Mr. Bates in?” he asked.
“I dunno,” said the boy, and slowly let himself down from the table upon which he had been sitting. Montague produced a card, and the boy disappeared. “This way,” he said, when he returned; and Montague found himself in a huge room, crowded with desks and chairs. Everything was in confusion; the floor was literally buried out of sight in paper.
Montague observed that there were only about a dozen men in the room; and several of these were putting on their coats. “There he is, over there,” said the office-boy.
He looked and saw Bates sitting at a desk, with his head buried in his arms. “Tired,” he thought to himself.
“Hello, Bates,” he said; then, as the other looked up, he gave a start of dismay.
“What's the matter?” he cried.
It was half a minute before Bates replied. His voice was husky. “They sold me out,” he whispered.
“What!” gasped the other.
“They sold me out!” repeated Bates, and struck the table in front of him. “Cut out the story, by God! Did me out of my scoop!
“Look at that, sir,” he added, and shoved toward Montague a double column of newspaper proofs, with a huge head-line, “Gotham Trust Company to be Wrecked,” and the words scrawled across in blue pencil, “Killed by orders from the office.”
Montague could scarcely find words to reply. He drew up a chair and sat down. “Tell me about it,” he said.
“There's nothing much to tell,” said Bates. “They sold me out. They wouldn't print it.”
“But why didn't you take it elsewhere?” asked the other.
“Too late,” said Bates; “the scoundrels—they never even let me know!” He poured out his rage in a string of curses.
Then he told Montague the story.
“I was in here at half-past ten,” he said, “and I reported to the managing editor. He was crazy with delight, and told me to go ahead—front page, double column, and all the rest. So Rodney and I set to work. He did the interview, and I did all the embroidery—oh, my God, but it was a story! And it was read, and went through; and then an hour or two ago, just when the forms were ready, in comes old Hodges—he's one of the owners, you know—and begins nosing round. 'What's this?' he cries, and reads the story; and then he goes to the managing editor. They almost had a fight over it. 'No paper that I am interested in shall ever print a story like that!' says Hodges; and the managing editor threatens to resign, but he can't budge him. The first thing I knew of it was when I got this copy; and the paper had already gone to press.”
“What do you suppose was the reason for it?” asked Montague, in wonder.
“Reason?” echoed Bates. “The reason is Hodges; he's a crook. 'If we publish that story,' he said, 'the directors of the bank will never meet, and we'll bear the onus of having wrecked the Gotham Trust Company.' But that's all a bluff, and he knew it; we could prove that that conference took place, if it ever came to a fight.”
“You were quite safe, it seems to me,” said Montague.
“Safe?” echoed Bates. “We had the greatest scoop that a newspaper ever had in this country—if only the Express were a newspaper. But Hodges isn't publishing the news, you see; he's serving his masters, whoever they are. I knew that it meant trouble when he bought into the Express. He used to be managing editor of the Gazette, you know; and he made his fortune selling the policy of that paper—its financial news is edited to this very hour in the offices of Wyman's bankers, and I can prove it to anybody who wants me to. That's the sort of proposition a man's up against; and what's the use of gathering the news?”
And Bates rose up with an oath, kicking away the chair behind him. “Come on,” he said; “let's get out of here. I don't know that I'll ever come back.”
Montague spent another hour wandering about with Bates, listening to his opinion of the newspapers of the Metropolis. Then, utterly exhausted, he went home; but not to sleep. He sat in a chair for an hour or two, his mind besieged by images of ruin and destruction. At last he lay down, but he had not closed his eyes when daylight began to stream into the room.
At eight o'clock he was up again and at the telephone. He called up Lucy's apartment house.
“I want to speak to Mrs. Taylor,” he said.
“She is not in,” was the reply.
“Will you ring up the apartment?” asked Montague. “I will speak to the maid.”
“This is Mr. Montague,” he said, when he heard the woman's voice. “Where is Mrs. Taylor?”
“She has not come back, sir,” was the reply.
Montague had some work before him that day which could not be put off. Accordingly he bathed and shaved, and had some coffee in his room, and then set out for his office. Even at that early hour there were crowds in the financial district, and another day's crop of rumours had begun to spring. He heard nothing about the Gotham Trust Company; but when he left court at lunch time, the newsboys on the street were shouting the announcement of the action of the bank directors. Lucy had failed in her errand, then; the blow had fallen!
There was almost a panic on the Exchange that day, and the terror and anxiety upon the faces of the people who thronged the financial district were painful to see. But the courts did not suspend, even on account of the Gotham Trust; and Montague had an important case to argue. He came out on the street late in the afternoon, and though it was after banking hours, he saw crowds in front of a couple of the big trust companies, and he read in the papers that a run upon the Gotham Trust had begun.
At his office he found a telegram from his brother Oliver, who was still in the Adirondacks: “Money in Trust Company of the Republic. Notify me of the slightest sign of trouble.”
He replied that there was none; and, as he rode up in the subway, he thought the problem over, and made up his own mind. He had a trifle over sixty thousand dollars in Prentice'............