by a lively and growing curiosity, Wyatt pondered his story. Wyatt wrote “specials” and occasional exposés and news features, not because he urgently had to, but because he liked to. A benevolent uncle's will had permitted him bachelor rooms in Trinity Court, also a very reputable-appearing roadster and a decent amount of leisure; but still, week by week, he turned out much copy. If writing is in a man's blood, what uncle's will ever shall eradicate it?
Wyatt's present objective was Newspaper Row, where he sought his good friend John Lomax, who had charge of the Boston Messenger's “bone yard.”
This bone yard—otherwise bone orchard, morgue, graveyard, or obit department— was on the fourth floor. Wyatt reached it through an overworked and feverish room where men in shirt sleeves were giving ear to chattering telegraphs, pounding the incredibly infirm typewriters that exist in all newspaper offices, or hastening about with agitation and profanity. Many cigarettes defied signs that threatened with instant discharge any employee who smoked such.
“Hey, John! Open your squirrel cage and let a nut in!”
“Hello there, Wy!” Lomax swung the wire-netted door. “What you want now?”
“Dope. I'm a fiend!” Wyatt entered the long and extraordinary cluttered room. “Give me a shot!”
“Who on? What about?” asked Lomax. This Lomax was a slow, drawling fellow, with only a remnant of curly gray hair. Bare-armed, round-shouldered, wearing a greasy green shade over his eyes, he seemed as dry as the innumerable clippings that bulged his files and pigeonholes. “Who's the story for?”
“You—when I get it.”
“Tt had better be, or you'd better clear out!”
“Oh, you'll get it, O. K.! | I want the dope on the aristocratic old boy that lives at 42 A Beacon. Something doing there. Shoot me the whole works.”
Lomax's brow knit in a web of wrinkles.
“Dead, or what?”
“No, not dead; but I figure he's getting into a jam that 'll nick his roll a few. By the way, dig me up something on Professor Maximilian Veazie, who runs a spiritualist game down Washington Street, below Dover.”
“Oh, Veazie! I don't need to scratch up anything on that baby! He's an all-round, smooth con artist. Been a fake charity grafter in New York, sold oil stocks and gold mines to ministers and orphans, worked the Isle of Pines racket for a while, had a whirl at the de luxe book racket, and—”
“That's good enough! How about the old boy he's hooking in now?”
“I know him, too—Elijah Damascus Lockwood—hell of a queer name, but no queerer than the old fellow himself. Money, too—no end. So Veazie's getting his hooks into old man Lockwood, eh? Coming up in the world, the professor is!”
John Lomax climbed ladders that moved on metal tracks, and found bulging brown paper envelopes, while Wyatt sat down to relight his pipe and blow smoke into the already thick air.
An odd place, the bone yard! From the ceiling, crossed by sprinkler pipes and electric wires, depended lights with green tin shades. Long bookcases groaned under the weight of innumerable reference books from many lands. Filing cabinets exuded data. Thousands of cubby-holes overflowed with the records of men, women, events. Dust hung tenuously in the electric-lighted atmosphere, mingled with a smell of printer's ink. Huge wastebaskets sagged with discarded papers and photographs.
On broad and dirty tables piles of copy paper lay amid rubber stamps, paste pots, scissors, and soft-leaded pencils. Overloaded wire spindles hung against the walls, whereon articles and clippings were impaled. Papers marked to be cut were piled in heaps. Boxes of metal—-stripped cuts and photo-engravings—stood ponderously under shelves. Maps and charts jostled card catalogues, rolls of fire hose, and stereotype mats.
From without, the telegraphs and typewriters steadily clattered; and, forming a contrabass to all, from lower regions came a muffled roaring of presses that shuddered the blurred air and kept the building vibrant. A brain for the whole great organism of the Messenger—its memory, its eyes, its nerves of contact with the past—this room intrigued the imagination and set it marveling.
Lomax presently gave Wyatt two dusty envelopes.
“Here's your dope, old man!”
But now a woman reporter was knocking for admission—a bobbed-haired woman with a vivid crimson hat, a blue-striped dress, and a wrist watch. Wyatt, a little cynical about women, smiled at her flashiness as she demanded:
“Oh, Mr. Lomax, please get me some clips on Jerry McCabe, that's an old dear!”
“Wait a minute, sister! The paper won't die if you don't have Jerry this very second!”