The Boy Grew Older Part 29

"I don't know," said Pat. "I haven't got that far yet. But what difference does it make what it means? That isn't the point. There's music in it."

As Peter was going to bed he cursed silently to himself. "d.a.m.n this music. They're even trying to play it on typewriters now."

CHAPTER IX

On sports Pat worked better and more cheerfully. It was Pat who devised the note at one of the Princeton football games, "The Tiger eleven has three fine backs and the greatest of these is Gharrity." And he came through splendidly when he was a.s.signed to cover Marshal Foch's activities at another game and report in detail what the Frenchman did.

Peter found the story posted on the board in the Bulletin office. In fact Twice had allowed Pat to have his signature in the paper. Right after Peter's own story it came--"By Peter Neale, Jr."

This was the third reading for Peter but he could not resist the pleasure of standing in front of the board in the City Room and looking over it again slowly:

"Ferdinand Foch, field marshal, was outranked this afternoon by Malcolm Aldrich, captain. The Field Marshal was received enthusiastically by the 80,000 spectators but he found he could not hold the attention of the throng once the whistle had blown. He became then just a spectator at one of the greatest football games ever played between Yale and Princeton. Come to think of it he was rather less a part of the proceedings than the young men in the cheering section behind him. Foch did not have a blue feather, or a girl, or a bet on the game. The greatest military leader in the world was a.s.signed today to the humble job of being just a neutral.

He must have known that momentous things were happening when 40,000 roared defiance and another 40,000 roared back. Undoubtedly he was stirred when huge sections of the Bowl turned into fluttering banks of orange and black, or of blue, but probably there was much of it which he could not understand. It would be hard, for instance, to explain to a man who had been at Verdun the justice of penalizing anybody for holding, nor did the rival teams pay any respect to the slogan 'They shall not pa.s.s!' They did it all the time.

"The young American officer detailed to help the distinguished visitor did his best. 'You see, Marshal,' he would explain, 'it's this way. Yale has _la balle_ on Princeton's 35-yard line and it's _premier bas_ with _dix_ yards to go.' Just at that point Aldrich or O'Hearn would tear through the Tigers for a run and the American officer grew so excited that he would lose the thread of his explanations. Foch never did catch up."

"It's just the way I would have written it myself," thought Peter.

Pat was grinning when he found him. "How did you like my parody?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Didn't you see yourself in that story about Foch. That business about 'They shall not pa.s.s' ought've tipped you off. I thought that was a regular Peter Neale touch."

"Oh," said Peter, "you were just fooling."

"But here's the best of it," added Pat. He held out a letter from Rufus Twice which read:

"Dear Pat, I want to congratulate you on the story you wrote about Foch at the football game. It was excellent. All the facts were there and you handled them with a fresh and original touch of your own. When I saw the Marshal at luncheon today he said he was very much amused by our story--Twice."

"Well," said Peter a little bitterly, "if that was just an imitation keep it up."

Pat did keep it up although he grew a little restive during the winter.

"If they're going to be many more of these indoor track meets," he complained, "I want to be put back on the Museum of Natural History.

Clark there in the sporting department is just crazy about facts. You have to squeeze them all into the first paragraph. Even if anything exciting ever did happen there wouldn't be any chance to tell about it.

You'd have to start out just the same and say how many people there were in the hall and what the temperature was and whether it was raining or snowing outside."

Still he had conformed with sufficient fidelity to remain in the graces of the powers on the Bulletin and when Summer came around Pat was a.s.signed to go with Peter to Atlantic City and watch Jack Dempsey train.

Pat's part was to write a half column of notes called 'Sidelights On The Big Show.' After the first day or so Pat lost interest in the actual boxing at Dempsey's camp.

"Where do you see anything in that?" he asked Peter as they sat at the ringside in the enclosure near the training camp of the champion.

Dempsey was whaling away with both hands at Larry Williams, an unfortunate blonde heavyweight who seemed to be under a contract or some other compulsion to go two rounds every day.

"Watch him," exclaimed Pat as Williams clinched desperately and tucked his head over Dempsey's shoulder. "He looks like an old cow leaning over a fence."

"That's a good line," said Peter, "don't waste it on me. Use it in the Bulletin."

But Pat wandered off and loafed around the training quarters. When he came back to the hotel late that afternoon he had something else.

"This is all right, isn't it?" he asked. Peter looked over the copy which Pat had written.

"Dempsey is taking a great deal of electricity into his system," he read, "in preparation for his fight with Carpentier. This portion of his training is being handled by S. J. Foster, D.C.M.T., chiropractor, mechano-therapist and electrical therapeutist. In other words Doc Foster is the man who rubs Dempsey after his workouts. But the rubbing is only a small part of it. Doc Foster insists on that. His chief pride and reliance is the polysine generator. 'Why, that machine,' said Doc Foster, this afternoon, 'has got some currents in it that would break your arm in a minute.

Yes, sir, they'd break your arm quicker than that.' And as he boasted he looked rather longingly at the fattest arm of the fattest newspaper correspondent. Of course, there are more soothing currents as well in the polysine generator. 'They just reach down after the deep muscles,' the old Doc explained, 'and grab 'em.' He neglected to add just what the electricity does with the deep muscles after it has grabbed them. Presumably it does not break them, but just frolics around with the muscles and then casts them aside like withered violets."

"Sure," said Peter, "that's fine. You don't have to bother with Larry Williams at all. I'll put all the stuff about him into the lead."

Next morning Peter awoke with a splitting headache. Toward noon it got much worse. He called Pat in from the next room. "I'm up against it," he told him. "I'm sick as a dog. Of course I could telegraph to the office and get them to send somebody down but I don't want to do that. This is your chance. You'll have to do the lead story. You say you can imitate me or parody me or whatever you call it. Now's the time to go to it. And say n.o.body has to know that I'm not doing it. Just sign your story 'by Peter Neale.'"

"I'll do my best," said Pat. Peter dozed off late that afternoon and the doze became a deep slumber. He did not wake until morning when there came a violent rapping on his door. In the hall was a messenger with a telegram. Peter opened it and read:

"What happened? We didn't get the story. Never mind telephoning explanations because I'm coming down over the week-end. I'll be at the hotel at one--Twice."

Pat was nowhere around the hotel and n.o.body seemed to know where he had gone. Peter was still mystified when Rufus Twice arrived. He thought at first of trying to conceal the fact that Pat had acted as his subst.i.tute and then decided not to. "It isn't fair to expect me to do as much as that," he thought. However he found that any such deception would have been useless.

"What happened to you?" was Twice's first question.

"I was sick. I had a blinding headache and I told Pat to do the story.

Didn't he send anything?"

"Yes, but it might as well have been nothing. All we had to go by was the A. P. Dempsey cut loose yesterday and knocked Larry Williams down three times. The last time they had to carry him out of the ring. And our story was something about a man named Daredevil Oliver that's doing a high dive at an amus.e.m.e.nt park down here. It was signed Peter Neale but I knew it couldn't be you."

Twice picked some copy out of his pocket and flourished it in the air.

"Lights. Gray mist. East wind," he read. "Good G.o.d! Peter, n.o.body can say I don't appreciate Walt Whitman or Amy Lowell, but I tell you Dempsey knocked Larry Williams down three times. The last time he was out clean as a whistle."

"You mean to say there wasn't any Peter Neale story in the paper?" asked Peter terrified.

"Yes, you get off all right. You don't suffer any. I did it myself. I rewrote the A. P. and signed your name. But it was just the merest chance that I happened to drop in at the office. You should have called me up and let me send a man down."

"But I didn't know he'd blow up like that. The other story he did from here seemed all right."

"Yes, but it wasn't news. I think Pat can write but somebody's got to stand over him and tell him what news is. The one he sent might have been all right for an editorial page feature though it was a little esoteric. What do you suppose 'gigglegold' means or is that something the operator did?"

"I don't know what it means but it's a word James Joyce uses in 'Ulysses.'"

"I'd forgotten," said Twice. "Of course. I was trying to place it. Great book, 'Ulysses,' never should have been suppressed. But you couldn't use any of it on the sporting page."

"Was it all like that?"

"Pretty much. It was about this Daredevil Oliver doing a high dive of a hundred and five feet into four feet of water. And there were only nine people there to watch him and how ironic it would have been if he'd broken his neck. And then some more about Eugene O'Neill and the tragic drama in America. Jack Dempsey or Larry Williams or the fight never got mentioned at all."

Pat came in without knocking. He was flushed and angry. "Mr. Twice," he said, "that story in the Bulletin signed 'Peter Neale' wasn't the story I sent. I wouldn't have written anything like that."

"I know it," said Twice, "that's why I wrote it."

"Didn't you go down to see the workout?" asked Peter.