15a The Prince and Betty

Smith, too, she noted, when they were back in the inner office, seemed to have something on his mind. He was strangely silent.

“Comrade Brown,” he said at last, “I wish this little journal of ours had a sporting page.”

Betty laughed.

“Less ribaldry,” protested Smith pained. “This is a sad affair. You saw the man I was talking to? That was Kid Brady. I used to know him when I was out West. He wants to fight anyone in the country at a hundred and thirty- three pounds. We all have our hobbies. That is Comrade Brady’s.”

“Is he a boxer?”

“He would like to be. Out West, nobody could touch him. He’s in the championship class. But he has been pottering about New York for a month without being able to get a fight. If we had a sporting page on Peaceful Moments we could do him some good, but I don’t see how we can write him up,” said Smith, picking up a copy of the paper, and regarding it gloomily, “in ‘Moments in the Nursery’ or ‘Moments with Budding Girlhood.’”

He put up his eyeglass, and stared at the offending journal with the air of a vegetarian who has found a caterpillar in his salad. Incredulity, dismay, and disgust fought for precedence in his expression.

“B. Henderson Asher,” he said severely, “ought to be in some sort of a home. Cain killed Abel for telling him that story.”

He turned to another page, and scrutinized it with deepening gloom.

“Is Luella Granville Waterman by any chance a friend of yours, Comrade Brown? No? I am glad. For it seems to me that for sheer, concentrated piffle, she is in a class by herself.”

He read on for a few moments in silence, then looked up and fixed Betty with his monocle. There was righteous wrath in his eyes.

“And people,” he said, “are paying money for this! Money! Even now they are sitting down and writing checks for a year’s subscription. It isn’t right! It’s a skin game. I am assisting in a carefully planned skin game!”

“But perhaps they like it,” suggested Betty.

Smith shook his head.

“It is kind of you to try and soothe my conscience, but it is useless. I see my position too clearly. Think of it, Comrade Brown! Thousands of poor, doddering, half-witted creatures in Brooklyn and Flatbush, who ought not really to have control of their own money at all, are getting buncoed out of whatever it is per annum in exchange for—how shall I put it in a forcible yet refined and gentlemanly manner?—for cat’s meat of this description. Why, selling gold bricks is honest compared with it. And I am temporarily responsible for the black business!”

He extended a lean hand with melodramatic suddenness toward Betty. The unexpectedness of the movement caused her to start back in her chair with a little exclamation of surprise. Smith nodded with a kind of mournful satisfaction.

“Exactly!” he said. “As I expected! You shrink from me. You avoid my polluted hand. How could it be otherwise? A conscientious green-goods man would do the same.” He rose from his seat. “Your attitude,” he said, “confirms me in a decision that has been in my mind for some days. I will no longer calmly accept this terrible position. I will try to make amends. While I am in charge, I will give our public something worth reading. All these Watermans and Ashers and Parslows must go!”

“Go!”

“Go!” repeated Smith firmly. “I have been thinking it over for days. You cannot look me in the face, Comrade Brown, and say that there is a single feature which would not be better away. I mean in the paper, not in my face. Every one of these punk pages must disappear. Letters must be despatched at once, informing Julia Burdett Parslow and the others, and in particular B. Henderson Asher, who, on brief acquaintance, strikes me as an ideal candidate for a lethal chamber—that, unless they cease their contributions instantly, we shall call up the police reserves. Then we can begin to move.”

Betty, like most of his acquaintances, seldom knew whether Smith was talking seriously or not. She decided to assume, till he should dismiss the idea, that he meant what he said.

“But you can’t!” she exclaimed.

“With your kind cooperation, nothing easier. You supply the mechanical work. I will compose the letters. First, B. Henderson Asher. ‘Dear Sir’—”

“But—” she fell back on her original remark—”but you can’t. What will Mr. Renshaw say when he comes back?”

“Sufficient unto the day. I have a suspicion that he will be the first to approve. His vacation will have made him see things differently—purified him, as it were. His conscience will be alive once more.”

“But—”

“Why should we worry ourselves because the end of this venture is wrapped in obscurity? Why, Columbus didn’t know where he was going to when he set out. All he knew was some highly interesting fact about an egg. What that was, I do not at the moment recall, but I understand it acted on Columbus like a tonic. We are the Columbuses of the journalistic world. Full steam ahead, and see what happens. If Comrade Renshaw is not pleased, why, I shall have been a martyr to a good cause. It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done, so to speak. Why should I allow possible inconvenience to myself to stand in the way of the happiness which we propose to inject into those Brooklyn and Flatbush homes? Are you ready then, once more? ‘Dear Sir—’”

Betty gave in.

When the letters were finished, she made one more objection.

“They are certain to call here and make a fuss,” she said, “Mr. Asher and the rest.”

“You think they will not bear the blow with manly fortitude?”

“I certainly do. And I think it’s hard on them, too. Suppose they depend for a living on what they make from