Page:Episodes-before-thirty.djvu/116

Rh eater. Send down bulletins about it. Now, better get a move on!"

On leaving the elevated train at East 18th Street, the streets were black with people, they even pressed up the front steps of the houses. The word "lion" was in everybody's mouth. Something about Cooper's voice and eyes had made me suspect a "fake." As I forced my way through towards 20th Street, there came a roar that set the air trembling even above the din of voices. It was certainly no fake.

On reaching 20th Street, the cordon of police, with pistols ready, keeping the crowd in order, showed plainly where the stable was. Gradually I bored a way through. The stable stood back from the road, a courtyard in front of it. A ladder, crowded already with reporters climbing up, led to a hayloft just above. I met the Evening Telegram man, whom I knew, half-way up this ladder. "Got a messenger boy? No! Then you can share mine," he offered good-naturedly. The only occupants of the yard were a dozen of these messenger boys, waiting to take the "copy" to the various newspaper offices. It was 8.30

I noticed to my surprise that the Evening Telegram man was a star reporter; three rungs above him, to my still greater surprise, climbed Richard Harding Davis. My vanity was stirred. This was a big story, yet Cooper had chosen me! As I squeezed up the ladder, my hands stuffed with paper, the lion below gave forth an awe-inspiring roar; it was a dreadful sound. The great doors of wood seemed matchwood easily burst through. The crowd swayed back a moment, then, with a cheer, swayed forward again.

In the loft I found some twenty reporters; each time the brute gave its terrible roar they scuttled into corners, behind the hay, even up into the rafters of the darkened loft. Pistol shots accompanied every roar, and the added terror lest a bullet from below might pierce the boards on which we stood, made us all jump about like dervishes. One man wrote his story, perched in the dark on the Rh