The Crackajack Story*

I

BY HAROLD KELLOCK.

T was a common report in the office that
Billy Doring had no other interest in the

world except the big news machine that he served. This was borne out by the fact that early reporters on the "gas-house" trick, stumbling into the office in the gray dawn, frequently found the little city editor there before them, and particularly by the experience of a man who dropped in once at midnight to recover some notes he had left behind for a current assignment, and was astonished to find a single electric lamp in that black, silent place glaring down upon Billy Doring perched on the edge of his chair, smoking his cigar and peering about with his curious smile.

But Douglas, the managing editor, knew that there was another side to Doring's life. He knew that on three days of the year the little city editor was sure to be absent from the office, and one of these days was his wedding anniversary, and the others were the birthdays of his wife, Anna, and little Lucy; and he was aware that in the drawer in Billy's table, amidst the litter of pencil stubs and clippings and old proofs, lay the photograph of a pretty, fair-haired woman with a little child.

Meanwhile the little city editor was announcing to his copy-readers: "We're going to run some roars for a week or two. Teaching fads and frills in the public schools is the thing."

He took up his telephone receiver. "This is the city desk," he murmured, in his tone of gentle inquiry.

And then, after a few intent seconds, he dropped his cigar on the floor and drew in his breath sharply. "Please repeat that bulletin," he said, curtly. The cadaverous copy-reader looked up with an air of astonishment. It was seldom indeed that anyone had to repeat a thing to Billy Doring, and seldom that he gave orders in that tone.

* From "McClure's Magazine," November, 1909.

Before Doring set the receiver down his right hand tapped the copy-reader's elbow.

"Headquarters reports steamboat Abraham Lincoln afire off Spuyten Duyvil, with women and children jumping into the water," he said in his usual soft voice. "It's a Sunday-school excursion, probably fifteen hundred aboard. Third Lutheran Church of Yorkville, Peter Henderson, pastor. You might pad it up for the first edition."

His eyes were wandering speculatively over the reporters' desks, while he continued his suggestions. "Merrihew can start the Harlem and Yonkers men out and call up the steamboat people. Brill, you might see what you can scrape up along the Hudson water-front by_'phone."

The cadaverous copy-reader convulsively grabbed a pile of copy-paper, and the other two were already at the telephone booths, while Billy Doring stepped to the reporters' desks. Four men sat there.

"Up at Spuyten Duyvil there's an excursion boat burning up filled with women and children," he said. "You might all go up. It sounds like a good story. Telephone."

The quartet made for the stairway on the run.

The telephone rang with a confirmatory bulletin from Police Headquarters, and Doring turned the receiver over to the cadaverous copy-reader as Brill rushed up, flushed and excited.

"She's been run aground all ablaze from stem to stern," he cried. "The water's full of women and children. Crackajack story!"

Doring was glancing at each page of Hoyt's hieroglyphics as fast as it was written. Without interrupting this supervision, he now wrote out, swiftly and without a single erasure, in his round, school-boy hand, an elaborate four-column caption for the story, and then rose to answer a bass bellow of "Doring!" from Douglas.

"What boat is that, Doring?" said Douglas, sharply, as the city editor came up.

"The Abraham Lincoln," said Doring.

Douglas grunted sharply, and for a minute the two men looked into each other's eyes.

"You-your wife" Douglas ended in an inarticu

late splutter; his vocal processes were not tuned to sympathy.

"I couldn't do anything up there-and we have to get out the paper," said Billy Doring, quietly. "No use mentioning it about the office any little thing sends the men up in the air on a day like this." A sudden nasal clamor from the streets came through the open window. "The yellows are out with it," he said, and then the insistent telephone called him again.

Pretty soon the story began to trickle in over the telephone from many sources. It came in drops, as it were, not as a logical, consecutive narrative, but as a series of inadequate, incoherent thimble fuls thrown carelessly at a news desk that raged with a thirst for gallon draughts. Over this tantalizing lack of the essential tale for the first edition the men lost their nerves and their tempers, and gradually a pandemonium of shrieks and howls and recriminations awoke in the office, so that a timid young chap who approached up the narrow stairs to invoke the mysterious editorial functions to proclaim his approaching nuptials, stood for a minute staring wide, and then precipitately fled.

Through these trying earlier stages of the day Billy Doring alone was the figure of silent efficiency, steadying all hands to their work, loosing the tension here and there with a whimsical suggestion backed by his quaint smile.

And then the real work of the day began. The trickling story swelled to a torrential flood. The telephone wires were like great conduits voiding it into the office as into a reservoir. It inundated the place, threatened to drown them all in the fierce inrush of its mere bulk. And then Billy Doring, puffing a bit more briskly at a large black cigar, composed his forces to wrestle with the weltering problem.

It was a pitiful tale. The boat had been packed with sixteen hundred women and children. Someone had smelled smoke, and then flames were licking along the decks, and the next the whole craft was a raging furnace. The captain was old and irresolute; the crew, after ineffectual efforts to stem the blaze with rotten hose that burst in their hands, leaped overboard in panic at the rush of the flames. Some passengers on the upper deck managed to get over a life-raft, which

sank like a stone. There was a struggle for the lifepreservers, the decayed canvas covering of which tore apart like paper, and then a scramble to get overboard.

This was the tale that poured in from a dozen sources, distorted with contradictions and impossibilities and the errors and omissions of haste and confusion. Billy Doring kept a hand on each separate strand of the tale, weaving the whole into the fabric of a strong, coherent, dramatic narrative told in terse, sharp English without the gush of fine writing.

It was early in the afternoon that a cub reporter called up with the first identifications of the dead. "You might give them to me," said Doring.

There were two or three names beginning with the letters A, B, and C, and then the reporter said: "Mrs. William Doring.

"Ten-year-old girl, supposed to be her daughter." "How was the woman identified?" asked Billy, quietly. "Letters in a little red morocco satchel she carried," said the reporter. "I hope it's no relation of yours, Mr. Doring?"

"That's all right," said Doring's even voice. "Give the rest of the names to Mr. Brill."

He knew that red morocco satchel.

He saw Brill run to the telephone booths, and then, mechanically, he wrote in the copy his wife's name, and below it: "Lucy Doring, 10 years old." After a minute, he erased this and substituted, "Ten-year-old girl, supposed to be her daughter."

A waiting boy reached out for the page, and as he did so he felt a hot drop fall upon the back of his hand. He looked up at Doring, and then his under jaw fell, and he stood, the paper held loosely in his hand, staring; for tears were trickling down the city editor's face.

"Go on, sonny," said the city editor, huskily. He drew his sleeve hastily across his eyes. But his voice. was clear again when, an instant later, he gave orders to run the list of names in heavy type in a block.

Over the office, people were watching Doring furtively. The copy-boy who had seen Billy's tears whispered awesomely to some of his fellows. The sporting editors had got the rumor and were staring at Doring over their neglected work. Some of the pressmen gath

ered in a flying group. "His wife and kid," said one. "Jee-rusalem! He's a calm one," ejaculated another. They kept an eye on Doring as they sweated over the machines. The telegraphers shook their heads at the news and stared portentously. The rumor invaded "The Desk" itself, and the copy-readers called out their orders in gentler tones. One of them whispered the report to Douglas, who sat now in a great litter of proofs and crumpled papers.

Douglas glanced over at Doring. The little man wore his quaint smile as he worked, but his face was very pale. "Doring!" shouted Douglas.

"I'm sorry, Doring," he spluttered, "con-damnfounded sorry! I guess you wanter go-up there." He waved a hand vaguely toward the window. "Go ahead. We'll get the paper out."

"Thanks," said Doring, fixing Douglas with his smile. "I'll see this edition through. Then, if you can spare me, I think I'll go out and buy a pistol and shoot all the directors of the steamboat company, and the captain, and the government inspectors who passed those lifebelts and hose-and then possibly myself. But I'll see this edition through all right first."

Again his telephone called him.

"This is the city desk," he said, in his tone of mild inquiry.

"This is Anna," said a woman's voice.

"Anna! Lucy!" the words trembled from his lips. "We're all right. You remember Lucy's swimming lessons in public school? Well, they saved us. We had to jump overboard, and I gave out, and the kid held me up until some men in a rowboat picked us out. The only thing we lost was my red morocco satchel. I gave it to the mother of a little girl Lucy had been playing with to hold while I tried to get some life preservers, and I never saw her again. I should have called you up before, Billy-I know how anxious you must have been-but I gave out completely for a while. But we're all right now-clothes dry and everything." "Thank God!" said Doring.

His eye peered humorously over at Merrihew, who was nervously puffing great clouds from his bulldog pipe.

"That's the wife-safe," he said. "I guess we'll for