Dawn O'Hara, the Girl Who Laughed Part 9

The boy took three unwilling steps toward the door. Then he turned a puzzled face toward the managing editor.

"Say, honest, I ain't never heard of dat guy. He must be a new one.

W'ere'll I find him?"

"Oh, d.a.m.n! Take those proofs to Blackie!" roared the managing editor.

And thus ended Blackie's enforced flight into the realms of dignity.

All these things, and more, I wrote to the scandalized Norah. I informed her that he wore more diamond rings and scarf pins and watch fobs than a railroad conductor, and that his checked top-coat shrieked to Heaven.

There came back a letter in which every third word was underlined, and which ended by asking what the morals of such a man could be.

Then I tried to make Blackie more real to Norah who, in all her sheltered life, had never come in contact with a man like this.

"... As for his morals--or what you would consider his morals, Sis--they probably are a deep crimson; but I'll swear there is no yellow streak.

I never have heard anything more pathetic than his story. Blackie sold papers on a down-town corner when he was a baby six years old. Then he got a job as office boy here, and he used to sharpen pencils, and run errands, and carry copy. After office hours he took care of some horses in an alley barn near by, and after that work was done he was employed about the pressroom of one of the old German newspaper offices.

Sometimes he would be too weary to crawl home after working half the night, and so he would fall asleep, a worn, tragic little figure, on a pile of old papers and sacks in a warm corner near the presses. He was the head of a household, and every penny counted. And all the time he was watching things, and learning. Nothing escaped those keen black eyes. He used to help the photographer when there was a pile of plates to develop, and presently he knew more about photography than the man himself. So they made him staff photographer. In some marvelous way he knew more ball players, and fighters and hors.e.m.e.n than the sporting editor. He had a nose for news that was nothing short of wonderful. He never went out of the office without coming back with a story. They used to use him in the sporting department when a rush was on. Then he became one of the sporting staff; then a.s.sistant sporting editor; then sporting editor. He knows this paper from the bas.e.m.e.nt up. He could operate a linotype or act as managing editor with equal ease.

"No, I'm afraid that Blackie hasn't had much time for morals. But, Norah dear, I wish that you could hear him when he talks about his mother. He may follow doubtful paths, and a.s.sociate with questionable people, and wear restless clothes, but I wouldn't exchange his friends.h.i.+p for that of a dozen of your ordinary so-called good men. All these years of work and suffering have made an old man of little Blackie, although he is young in years. But they haven't spoiled his heart any. He is able to distinguish between sham and truth because he has been obliged to do it ever since he was a child selling papers on the corner. But he still clings to the office that gave him his start, although he makes more money in a single week outside the office than his salary would amount to in half a year. He says that this is a job that does not interfere with his work."

Such is Blackie. Surely the oddest friend a woman ever had. He possesses a genius for friends.h.i.+p, and a wonderful understanding of suffering, born of those years of hards.h.i.+p and privation. Each learned the other's story, bit by bit, in a series of confidences exchanged during that peaceful, beatific period that follows just after the last edition has gone down. Blackie's little cubby-hole of an office is always blue with smoke, and cluttered with a thousand odds and ends--photographs, souvenirs, boxing-gloves, a litter of pipes and tobacco, a wardrobe of dust-covered discarded coats and hats, and Blackie in the midst of it all, sunk in the depths of his swivel chair, and looking like an amiable brown gnome, or a cheerful little joss-house G.o.d come to life. There is in him an uncanny wisdom which only the streets can teach. He is one of those born newspaper men who could not live out of sight of the ticker-tape, and the copy-hook and the proof-sheet.

"Y' see, girl, it's like this here," Blackie explained one day. "W're all workin' for some good reason. A few of us are workin' for the glory of it, and most of us are workin' t' eat, and lots of us are pluggin'

an' savin' in the hopes that some day we'll have money enough to get back at some people we know; but there is some few workin' for the pure love of the work--and I guess I'm one of them fools. Y' see, I started in at this game when I was such a little runt that now it's a ingrowing habit, though it is comfortin' t' know you got a place where you c'n always come in out of the rain, and where you c'n have your mail sent."

"This newspaper work is a curse," I remarked. "Show me a clever newspaper man and I'll show you a failure. There is nothing in it but the glory--and little of that. We contrive and scheme and run about all day getting a story. And then we write it at fever heat, searching our souls for words that are cleancut and virile. And then we turn it in, and what is it? What have we to show for our day's work? An ephemeral thing, lacking the first breath of life; a thing that is dead before it is born. Why, any cub reporter, if he were to put into some other profession the same amount of nerve, and tact, and ingenuity and finesse, and stick-to-it-iveness that he expends in prying a single story out of some unwilling victim, could retire with a fortune in no time."

Blackie blew down the stem of his pipe, preparatory to re-filling the bowl. There was a quizzical light in his black eyes. The little heap of burned matches at his elbow was growing to kindling wood proportions. It was common knowledge that Blackie's trick of lighting pipe or cigarette and then forgetting to puff at it caused his bill for matches to exceed his tobacco expense account.

"You talk," chuckled Blackie, "like you meant it. But sa-a-ay, girl, it's a lonesome game, this retirin' with a fortune. I've noticed that them guys who retire with a barrel of money usually dies at the end of the first year, of a kind of a lingerin' homesickness. You c'n see their pictures in th' papers, with a pathetic story of how they was just beginnin' t' enjoy life when along comes the grim reaper an' claims 'em."

Blackie slid down in his chair and blew a column of smoke ceilingward.

"I knew a guy once--newspaper man, too--who retired with a fortune.

He used to do the city hall for us. Well, he got in soft with the new administration before election, and made quite a pile in stocks that was tipped off to him by his political friends. His wife was crazy for him to quit the newspaper game. He done it. An' say, that guy kept on gettin' richer and richer till even his wife was almost satisfied. But sa-a-ay, girl, was that chap lonesome! One day he come up here looking like a dog that's run off with the steak. He was just dyin' for a kind word, an' he sniffed the smell of the ink and the hot metal like it was June roses. He kind of wanders over to his old desk and slumps down in the chair, and tips it back, and puts his feet on the desk, with his hat tipped back, and a b.u.m stogie in his mouth. And along came a kid with a bunch of papers wet from the presses and sticks one in his hand, and--well, girl, that fellow, he just wriggled he was so happy. You know as well as I do that every man on a morning paper spends his day off hanging around the office wis.h.i.+n' that a mob or a fire or somethin' big would tear lose so he could get back into the game. I guess I told you about the time Von Gerhard sent me abroad, didn't I?"

"Von Gerhard!" I repeated, startled. "Do you know him?"

"Well, he ain't braggin' about it none," Blackie admitted. "Von Gerhard, he told me I had about five years or so t' live, about two, three years ago. He don't approve of me. Pried into my private life, old Von Gerhard did, somethin' scand'lous. I had sort of went to pieces about that time, and I went t' him to be patched up. He thumps me fore 'an' aft, firing a volley of questions, lookin' up the roof of m' mouth, and squintin'

at m' finger nails an' teeth like I was a prize horse for sale. Then he sits still, lookin' at me for about half a minute, till I begin t' feel uncomfortable. Then he says, slow: 'Young man, how old are you?'

"'O, twenty-eight or so,' I says, airy.

"'My Gawd!' said he. 'You've crammed twice those years into your life, and you'll have to pay for it. Now you listen t' me. You got t' quit workin', an' smokin', and get away from this. Take a ocean voyage,' he says, 'an' try to get four hours sleep a night, anyway.'

"Well say, mother she was scared green. So I tucked her under m' arm, and we hit it up across the ocean. Went t' Germany, knowin' that it would feel homelike there, an' we took in all the swell baden, and chased up the Jungfrau--sa-a-ay, that's a cla.s.sy little mountain, that Jungfrau. Mother, she had some swell time I guess. She never set down except for meals, and she wrote picture postals like mad. But sa-a-ay, girl, was I lonesome! Maybe that trip done me good. Anyway, I'm livin'

yet. I stuck it out for four months, an' that ain't so rotten for a guy who just grew up on printer's ink ever since he was old enough to hold a bunch of papers under his arm. Well, one day mother an' me was sittin'

out on one of them veranda cafes they run to over there, w'en somebody hits me a crack on the shoulder, an' there stands old Ryan who used t' do A. P. here. He was foreign correspondent for some big New York syndicate papers over there.

"'Well if it ain't Blackie!' he says. 'What in Sam Hill are you doing out of your own cell when Milwaukee's just got four more games t' win the pennant?'

"Sa-a-a-ay, girl, w'en I got through huggin' him around the neck an'

buyin' him drinks I knew it was me for the big s.h.i.+p. 'Mother,' I says, 'if you got anybody on your mind that you neglected t' send picture postals to, now's' your last chance. 'F I got to die I'm going out with m' scissors in one mitt, and m' trusty paste-pot by m' side!' An' we hits it up for old Milwaukee. I ain't been away since, except w'en I was out with the ball team, sending in sportin' extry dope for the pink sheet. The last time I was in at Baumbach's in comes Von Gerhard an'--"

"Who are Baumbach's?" I interrupted.

Blackie regarded me pityingly. "You ain't never been to Baumbach's?

Why girl, if you don't know Baumbach's, you ain't never been properly introduced to Milwaukee. No wonder you ain't hep to the ways of this little community. There ain't what the s'ciety editor would call the proper ontong cordyal between you and the natives if you haven't had coffee at Baumbach's. It ain't hardly legal t' live in Milwaukee all this time without ever having been inside of B--"

"Stop! If you do not tell me at once just where this wonderful place may be found, and what one does when one finds it, and how I happened to miss it, and why it is so necessary to the proper understanding of the city--"

"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Blackie, grinning, "I'll romp you over there to-morrow afternoon at four o'clock. Ach Himmel! What will that for a grand time be, no?"

"Blackie, you're a dear to be so polite to an old married cratur' like me. Did you notice--that is, does Ernst von Gerhard drop in often at Baumbach's?"

CHAPTER VIII. KAFFEE AND KAFFEEKUCHEN

I have visited Baumbach's. I have heard Milwaukee drinking its afternoon Kaffee.

O Baumbach's, with your deliciously crumbling b.u.t.ter cookies and your kaffee kuchen, and your thick cream, and your thicker waitresses and your c.o.c.kroaches, and your dinginess and your dowdy German ladies and your black, black Kaffee, where in this country is there another like you!

Blackie, true to his promise, had hailed me from the doorway on the afternoon of the following day. In the rush of the day's work I had quite forgotten about Blackie and Baumbach's.

"Come, Kindchen!" he called. "Get your bonnet on. We will by Baumbach's go, no?"

Ruefully I gazed at the grimy cuffs of my blouse, and felt of my dishevelled hair. "Oh, I'm afraid I can't go. I look so mussy. Haven't had time to brush up."

"Brush up!" scoffed Blackie, "the only thing about you that will need brus.h.i.+n' up is your German. I was goin' t' warn you to rumple up your hair a little so you wouldn't feel overdressed w'en you got there. Come on, girl."

And so I came. And oh, I'm so glad I came!

I must have pa.s.sed it a dozen times without once noticing it--just a dingy little black shop nestling between two taller buildings, almost within the shadow of the city hall. Over the sidewalk swung a shabby black sign with gilt letters that spelled, "Franz Baumbach."

Blackie waved an introductory hand in the direction of the sign. "There he is. That's all you'll ever see of him."

"Dead?" asked I, regretfully, as we entered the narrow doorway.

"No; down in the bas.e.m.e.nt baking Kaffeekuchen."

Two tiny show-windows faced the street--such queer, old-fas.h.i.+oned windows in these days of plate gla.s.s. At the back they were quite open to the shop, and in one of them reposed a huge, white, immovable structure--a majestic, heavy, nutty, surely indigestible birthday cake.

Around its edge were flutings and scrolls of white icing, and on its broad breast reposed cherries, and stout b.u.t.terflies of jelly, and cunning traceries of colored sugar. It was quite the dressiest cake I had ever beheld. Surely no human hand could be wanton enough to guide a knife through all that magnificence. But in the center of all this splendor was an inscription in heavy white letters of icing: "Charlottens Geburtstag."

Reluctantly I tore my gaze from this imposing example of the German confectioner's art, for Blackie was tugging impatiently at my sleeve.

"But Blackie," I marveled, "do you honestly suppose that that structure is intended for some Charlotte's birthday?"

"In Milwaukee," explained Blackie, "w'en you got a birthday you got t'