Читать книгу Jericho's Daughters - Paul Iselin Wellman - Страница 24

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Almost exactly three years ago, Wistart remembered, the problem first became manifest to him, when he sat in this same office with John Giddings, the Clarion’s business manager. Giddings was gray and dry, with huge, almost elephantine ears, and old-fashioned pince-nez glasses perched on his large nose. He was a senior employee who had begun his service in the Clarion’s earliest days as a printer’s devil, progressing upward with earthworm slowness until by the very inertia of accumulating years he became business manager.

An efficiency expert would not have approved of Mr. Giddings. Indolent and not very alert, his management of the advertising and circulation departments, nominally under his direction, was loose and far from effective. On that morning, three years before, he had news for Wistart.

“The Audit Bureau of Circulation people have given me their preliminary report,” he said.

“Ah, yes,” said Wistart. “This is our present circulation?”

“Not complete. An estimate really—the official report comes later——”

“But this is pretty close?”

“Well—in the neighborhood.”

“You mean we’ve lost all that circulation in the past year?”

“Only about ten percent,” said Giddings a little uneasily. “We can make it up by a vigorous circulation campaign.”

“What about the drop in advertising?”

“There’s been a slight retail recession——”

“But the national space is off as well as the local.”

“I’ll have a talk with the advertising department,” Giddings said. “We need to spur things up a bit, I admit. Especially now.”

Wistart glanced up from the report. “Why especially now?”

“You mean you haven’t heard?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

John Giddings squirmed uncomfortably and pulled at one of his flapping earlobes. “I thought you’d been informed—the report came in this morning——”

“Mrs. Wedge is flying to Hawaii,” explained Wistart. “I was seeing her off at the airport and only just came to the office. What is this report?”

“Well—according to my understanding—there’s going to be an attempt to start another newspaper in Jericho.”

Another newspaper! Wistart stared, feeling the blood rush from his face to his heart.

“Has anyone tried to verify this?” he managed to ask at last.

“Yes. I made inquiries. I’m afraid—that maybe it’s so. Oh, nothing to worry about, I think. Some syndicate’s bought a building over in Jugtown, near the courthouse. I understand presses and linotype machines are ordered and contracts signed with newsprint companies. The usual preliminaries. But it’s been tried before, you know. Jericho won’t support two newspapers—it’s been proved. Nothing to worry about, as I said.”

Nothing to worry about! And with the Clarion already losing ground, though it was alone in its field? Wistart was not a great newspaperman, but he had enough experience to know how difficult it is to get a newspaper under way again once it has slipped back. Inertia is a terrible weight to overcome in the journalistic world. A newspaper is dependent not on the habits of one, or a few, but of all the thousands of its readers; it must change all those habits to regain ground it has lost.

Although the winter day was cold outside and the office no more than comfortably warm, Wistart took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his suddenly dampened forehead.

“John,” he said, “this is serious. Who’s going to run—the new paper?”

“All I know is that they’re brothers named Ender—Eddie and Tony.”

“Never heard of them. Where are they from?”

“Chicago, originally.”

“Get some wires out and check on them.”

“All right, Wistart.”

“And report back—the first minute you hear!”

Giddings was somewhat startled by the vehemence of the command. If the boss was so jumpy, there might be something to worry about after all ...

The report came back quickly. A national advertising agency which represented the Clarion telegraphed:

Eddie and Tony Ender formerly here in Chicago. Grew up in big circulation—advertising rat race during period of hottest newspaper fight between Hearst, News, and Trib. Reported sharpshooters. Tony circulation specialist, Eddie advertising shark. Hear they have cornered available comic, feature releases in Jericho. Any truth?

Wistart glanced up from the message. “What about the features?”

Giddings laughed comfortably. “Haven’t touched us. We’ve got everything we’ve always had. They may have taken what we didn’t want.”

“Are you sure we’ve got the best?”

“All I can say is they’re the ones we’ve used for years—Dr. Hazlett, the Lonely Hearts, Quilt Patterns, Crossword Puzzle, and all the others. And the comics have been adequate in the past——”

“The past?” Somehow the word struck fear in Wistart. “What about the present?”

“I never read comics myself,” said Giddings easily, “but I haven’t heard any complaints about ours.”

“What complaints would there be when we’re the only paper? Check and see if they have cornered the features.”

A day passed, and again Giddings was in Wistart’s office with word from the big feature syndicates. The word sounded ominous. Yes, the Sentinel Publishing Company had contracted for what seemed an endless number of syndicated features, including all the comics of the newer vintage, various special departments, and every available column of opinion.

“What’ll they do with them all?” Giddings asked. “They won’t have the space to publish them.”

“I’ll tell you what they’ll do,” said Wistart with sudden prescience. “They’ll pay for them and use only what they want—and keep us from using the rest.”

“That costs money——”

“And they’ve got money. They want to kill us, and they’ll run at a loss for years if they can choke us out. Know who’s behind them? One of the biggest newspaper chains. And who they’re tied up with locally? Tom Pollock’s their attorney.”

Giddings gave a scornful sniff. Tom Pollock—Judge Thomas Jefferson Pollock—was a Democratic politician reputed to control the vote in the city’s poorer districts, commonly called Jugtown. The Clarion often had peeled him rather unmercifully, and he was reputed to be the newspaper’s bitterest enemy.

“If that’s the kind of disreputable element they want,” Giddings said, “they’ll not last long in Jericho.”

Wistart stared at him. So steeped in his own inertia was old John Giddings that his mind could not grasp this new peril. Clearly there was no help here. Wistart let him go back to his desk. All at once he knew that he himself, and he alone, must grapple with this problem, without any aid, counsel, or encouragement from anyone.

He was beginning now to see the full picture: he, and Giddings, and the entire Clarion force, had been caught asleep, drowsing when they should have been alert, in a smug belief of security, so that they were perhaps already overwhelmed without even knowing it.

The very next day, on every billboard that could be rented in the city and around it, a blatant, shrieking announcement appeared:

Dedicated to the Greatness of Jericho

THE MORNING SENTINEL

New—alert—progressive—friendly.

A stride forward in progress.

Watch for it!

First in news, first in features, first

in sports, first in comics, first in

ideas, first in service to the community.

Three Wire Services.

Jericho people discussed the announcement eagerly, and there seemed to be a general feeling that a second paper would be good for the city. There even appeared to be a little current of rejoicing over a setback to the Clarion, which long had dominated opinion, politically and otherwise, to the resentment of some dissenters.

To Wistart it was like defeat already sustained. He cabled Mary Agnes in Honolulu, but she had only just arrived there, and he received an indifferent reply that she would not be back for at least two months. It was obvious that she was utterly unconcerned over his dilemma.

There was nobody with whom he could even share his great worry, and he was bewildered and terrified. In desperation he flew to Chicago to discuss matters with his advertising representatives there, only to receive from them the coldest of discouraging information.

Yet there, in the very midst of his black slough of despond, something happened to him that changed his life ... the only good thing that ever had happened to him, he sometimes thought ... something that enabled him somehow to keep up a fight he thought was lost for three long years—until now, when he was facing the gravest crisis of all, the crisis that caused him to telephone Mary Agnes in Los Angeles.

Mary Agnes ... he fell to wondering what, after all, had induced his wife to change her plans and come home immediately when she told him she would not. Certainly she seemed far from interested either in him or his problems when he met her plane the night before.

“I’m too tired to talk,” she said to him in the car, throwing back her head against the seat with closed eyes. “Please, Wistart, I can’t stand being bored just at this minute.”

That was the end of their conversation. They rode home in silence, and parted in silence to go to their respective rooms. She seemed aloof, not at all inquisitive, and quite uncompassionate.