The Lone Lady in Black and the Roman-Nosed Baby

HIS is the inside story of the lone lady in black and the Roman-nosed baby, which is told to one another in confidence by the public nurses of Chibosh, that marvelous metropolis that was governed by a press agent; of the Roman-nosed baby and the whisper—the huge devastating whisper which was set loose in that vast population by Michael F. Melody, that press agent, in haste, in an hour of great personal peril.

He was, when he released it, in very great personal danger indeed. Ever since his meeting with the two mysterious women with the card catalogue—and their threat to send him back to a Federal prison if he did not aid them to elect another candidate mayor—he had conducted the publicity factory of Mayor Herman J. True with great care, And in the five weeks since the great milk-bath mystery had dropped so suddenly from the front pages and the minds of the people of Chibosh—while Mr. Melody advised secretly with these women—scarcely a publicity stunt worthy of the name had been pulled in the interests of the good, the common people and Herman J. True.

It was a natural condition which could not remain unseen, and—though terrifying—it was not unexpected to Mr. Melody when he was called upon the carpet by Chinese Meeghan, the great Oriental-faced power, who governed those who governed Chibosh.

“A sweet publicity agent you are,” he was saying to Mr. Melody, bawling him out in that secret shabby room, up that old private flight of stairs, from which he governed the governors of Chibosh, “Anybody'd think, from the speeches and interviews you've been getting out the past month for that old dumb-bell, that you were making publicity against him instead of for him.”

He had clearly, Mr. Melody saw, been watching the way the work of the Phantom Factory had been let down in those past few weeks—to satisfy those two women with the card catalogue who were out to elect John Henry Peters mayor, During all that time not one issue with a kick had been put out, not one new phantom organization formed, not one old one started shouting; and the interviews from Mayor True had all been on the defensive or worse.

But more than this—and what made it more noticeable—the weeks were now working on toward June, the time when Mr. Meeghan must use the great spontaneous forces of democracy to decide, in his private office, who would be nominated and elected the next mayor of Chibosh in the coming fall; and during all that time there had been a movement, quite evidently growing, toward the nomination of that youngish red-headed lawyer, John Henry Peters, who was so especially repugnant to Mr. Meeghan, on the ticket which would oppose his. Far from dropping his suit against Mayor True to prevent him from spending more money than the city had, this man had pushed it all the harder, and had even got a larger and larger following as he had done so.

“What's going on?” Mr. Meeghan was asking Mr. Melody, talking more than usual, for he was very angry. “Are you double-crossing us? It looks that way. Every line you've put out in the papers lately has been a knock for our own fathead and a boost for the other side, playing up this red-headed patriot in the public eye.”

His voice was hoarse and his motionless face was more than usually menacing as he said this. And Mr. Melody, behind the calm blandness of his face and eyes, was very nervous, He might have known that sooner or later there would have to be a show-down with Silent Meeghan, who saw everything, and spoke of it when his time came.

“I even understand the women are out for him,” he said, giving Mr. Melody a most disturbing look, with these most disturbing words of all.

Was it a hint—a suggestion—of yet hidden knowledge? Or a stab in the dark—one of Chinese Meeghan's wise conjectures? Mr. Melody, greatly worried behind his shallow and unreadable eyes, could only fear and wonder.

“You want to get busy, pull something right off now that'll start that redhead on the skids. Or you might find yourself all at once where you won't want to be—on a long vacation!” Meeghan said, dismissing Mr. Melody with the threat he least cared to hear,

“All right,” he answered obediently; and passed down the secret dusty stairs thinking, his new light spring overcoat unbuttoned, the white flower in its lapel drooping, his yellow gloves still hidden in his pockets.

The time had come which Mr, Melody had feared. On the one hand, Chinese Meeghan would put him back in prison if he once discovered him, or if he did not do exactly what he wished of him; on the other hand, these devilish women, with their knowledge of the desire of the Federal authorities to find him, would no doubt notify them if he did not do the exact opposite. It seemed a desperate and impossible situation. Indeed, Mr. Melody would have left the city long ago had he not known it would be useless for him to do so; that the long arm of Chinese Meeghan would in that case almost certainly land him back in prison, if for nothing but keeping up the discipline of his government of the governors of Chibosh.

Still thinking of all this, Mr. Melody passed back to the second-class business building across the street from the city hall and sat, without the energy to remove either coat or hat, beneath the identical and tremendous Roman-nosed portraits of Mayor True, slumped down in his chair, still thinking.

The hint, or warning, of Chinese Meeghan—if it were a warning—concerning the women and this Peters kept ringing back into his ears. If there were any one place where he could operate—to convince Meeghan of his innocence—it would be there; some stunt with the women. But how? How?

The Phantom Factory lay silent about him; the sincere and virtuous campaign portraits of the mayor—the strong-faced, Roman-nosed mayor of the plain honest people of Chibosh looked down, apparently brooding with him over his great problem. Suddenly he stirred at last.

“Whispers!” he murmured to himself. “Whispers!”

Stiffening with hope, he yet remained silent some minutes longer.

“The only thing!” he assured himself at last.

Rising and now taking off his overcoat and hat, he called to his telephone operator.

“Get Dorna Dare over—right away,” he directed her.

It was his last throw, his only chance. He couldn't come out with newspaper publicity where those two women politicians would see it and know that they were double-crossed,

And yet he must certainly get busy and clean up this man Peters for Chinese Meeghan right away.

There was only one thing left; a thing just the opposite of publicity—whispers. Whispers among the women.

ORNA DARE, the lady political adviser of the True administration and the Phantom Factory, sat around the corner of the desk from Mr. Melody, her thin face calmer than his own. A celebrated lady newspaper investigator, she was now also the closest personal counselor of Mayor and Mrs. True. A live wire, a natty dresser and a keen, active mind, Mr. Melody always called her in when he was working on the woman's vote.

“Listen,” said Mr. Melody. “I've got to start something again. I'm out for something new.”

“New publicity?” she asked him.

Her costly wrap fell back from her as she sat watching him. Her dark eyes shone hard and sharp as a bird's from beneath a small golden hat.

“No,” Mr. Melody replied; “just the opposite.”

“What?”

“A whisper—with a punch,” he told her. “A knock-out for this Peters boy from the women.”

They were getting to use them now more and more in politics—both local and national of course—these whispering campaigns about the candidates—since the women came into the voting. They've got to have their nominees all moral—the women voters; home family men, like Mayor True. And you can send a whisper through them all down the line, like a fire in an oil works, if you only get it started right.

“Where would you say to start it?” he asked her, and went over the different societies and conventions and what not where the real good whispering campaigns had been started from in the past. “You've got to spread it quick,” he said. “The time is short.”

“I know,” said Dorna Dare, watching him, and not speaking yet.

“And you've got to get them red-hot.”

“I know.”

“And you've got to get them all.”

“So you've got to wave the baby,” said Dorna Dare, directly and positively.

“Sure,” agreed Mr. Melody; “as much as possible.”

That is what they all do now, of course, locally and nationally; that is the one sure thing they know about the women in politics. They all wave the baby if possible in maternity bills and child-welfare bills in the legislatures or in whispering campaigns with the voters, and the women will always rise to it. They'll follow the baby anywhere, regardless of party or anything else, trampling down everything else before them. The baby is the women's flag in politics; it works fine always.

Dorna Dare, the woman-vote expert, sat tense, nervous, thinking, considering ways and means.

“Some place—some good live women's society to start your whisper from,” she murmured half aloud.

“Yes,” said Mr. Melody, getting out of her way, sitting back easy while she worked it out. All at once he saw her start, look up, speak.

“The Umja!” she said. “That's what you want!”

“Sure!” said Mr. Melody right away, taking his feet down from the desk and letting his chair legs down upon the floor. That was it of course—the Umja.

And she reminded him how the Morning Truth was working all that stuff, using that shorter term they all knew it by in all the newspaper offices and publicity factories—the Umja.

“It's got more kick with the women than all the sob stuff for years. it's got a double hold on them. It waves the baby, and at the same time brings in all that justice-for-women stuff that's been going so strong on the women's pages ever since the war,” she said.

And she refreshed his memory on how the Morning Truth was cashing in on it, starting in with that series by that bitterly famous English author on Our Unmarried Mothers: Shall They Be Shot, Hanged or Given Justice? And coming in with the daily interviews from the women on the street as a follow-up.

“It's been a puller—a circulation builder—all over, since the war,” she told him. “With every kind of paper. They all use it, from next to crocheting on the woman's pages of the religious weeklies to next-to-censored book advertising in the lead-your-own-life organs. It's got all the women of all kinds going. There's pull galore in the thing.”

Mr. Melody nodded, thinking.

“The Umja, huh?” he said half aloud. There was the great come-back there, he knew that.

“And they're live wires in there—great advertisers,” continued Dorna Dare in her hard, terse, nervous voice. “Why, you know that! You know how here just the other day we arranged to have Mayor True address them at the mayor's annual baby carnival, just here next week.”

Mr. Melody nodded. Naturally, he would know it, having got up and made the programs for Mayor True's baby carnival from the beginning; ever since he and Dorna Dare had worked up the thing, staging Mayor and Mother True for the mothers' vote the last two years—waving the baby.

Mr. Melody sat silent, thinking, a new light coming into his eyes gradually.

“The Umja,” he repeated, in a deep study.

“Look,” said Dorna Dare, going on, seeing she had him with her. “Why isn't there something in this?”

Mr. Melody observed her closely.

“They're live wires in there,” she repeated; “always working out into new territory. They're looking for a general counsel now.” Mr, Melody looked up inquiringly, “To bring their justice suits.”

“Oh, I see,” said Mr. Melody.

“Why can't we slip in Goldfish & Goldfish and let them slip in the whisper—some way, some”

She did not finish. Mr. Melody, with a look of sharp intelligence in his eyes, had interrupted her.

“I got a better one than that,” he said. “You watch me!”

It was some little time after she had gone that he called his telephone operator.

“Get me Goldfish & Goldfish,” he said; “both of them, in here, tomorrow morning.”

OLDFISH & GOLDFISH, father and son, sat regarding Mr. Melody over new cigars in the Phantom Factory of Mayor True.

“We've got to put out a prenomination whisper on this boy Peters,” Mr. Melody was telling them.

“Sure, sure, positively,” agreed the obliging Mr. A. Goldfish warmly. Mr. I. Goldfish, his son, contented himself with watching.

“A real live one, you understand,” said Mr, Melody,

“We understand,” said Mr. I. Goldfish, looking steadily from beneath his lowered eyebrows. “Didn't we put that one over in the last governorship campaign?”

“That one about his being the natural left-handed descendant of the Duke of Chichester?”

“That lost him the whole anti-English vote,”

“And bust his whole campaign wide open.”

“This one is for the women altogether,” explained Mr. Melody.

“Sure, sure,” said the older Mr. Goldfish, and recalled the convention of women that his last successful campaign whisper had started from.

“It's always the women,” asserted the more taciturn younger Goldfish.

“In all these whispering campaigns,” said his father. You tell a few of them just before the convention—and tell them it's not ever to be mentioned.”

“And before they adjourn they're passing resolutions on it—in executive session,” said the son, continuing his statements.

“Have you picked out your convention, your society yet—to whisper with?” inquired Mr. A. Goldfish now.

“I have,” said Mr. Melody.

“Which is it?”

“The Umja,” replied Mr. Melody.

“What's that?” asked the older and less active-minded Mr. Goldfish interestedly.

“The Unmarried Mothers' Justice Association,” replied Mr. Melody, using the longer and more formal name.

“Oh-ho! I see,” said Mr. Goldfish with slow appreciation. And the young Mr. Goldfish nodded his approval, while Mr. Melody went on to tell them his exact plan.

“We'll have them offer it to Peters first,” he said—“the general counsel job.”

“Sure, sure.”

“And then he'll turn it down.”

“Yes, sure. Ain't he already shown so? Ain't he come out in the papers and slammed the whole thing—the whole Umja proposition—three times now already?”

“And he'll refuse,” continued Mr. Melody, “and turn them down, and make them sore.”

“Sure!”

“And then you'll slip in.”

“And do the rest,” said Mr. I. Goldfish.

“Set the whisper whispering,” said his father.

“Have you got your whisper ready?” asked the younger Goldfish.

“A good live one?” inquired his father, leaning forward expectantly, with moist lips ajar.

“I'll give it to you,” replied Mr. Melody with a certain pride of authorship in his voice as he did so.

“That'll do,” said the more laconic younger Goldfish.

“Beautiful! Beautiful!” said the older Goldfish, with a far-off, rapt expression in his eyes as he contemplated it.

“Yes; but all in the shade. Not a word in the papers!” said Mr. Melody, warning them. “We've got to see to that.”

“Sure, sure!” said the Messrs. Goldfish.

They could do it, too, if anybody could. They were counsel for both the Morning Truth and Peoples Pictures in all their libel suits.

“For this is a whispering campaign strictly,” said Mr. Melody. “All word of mouth, way down underneath.”

“We know,” said the younger Mr. Goldfish.

“Leave it to us,” said the older.

Waving their hands, they left the Phantom Factory. It was several days before Mr. Melody met them in conference again.

“Did it go?” asked Mr. Melody.

“Grand! Grand!” replied the older Goldfish.

“He bit like a shark,” stated the younger.

“The society—the Umja—offered it to him—the counselship—by a special delegation.”

“And he bawled them out, and the whole idea of it, all over the place.”

“He told them they were just only wild women, running around.”

“With their minds and hair loose.”

“Getting self-advertising on stuff that ought not never to get printed in the papers.”

“And got them all sore.”

“And suspicious.”

“And then you got yourselves put in counsel?” asked Mr. Melody.

“Right away. And got busy.”

“Sure! Ain't we filed one hundred and eight of them justice suits already?”

“He means the other thing,” explained Mr. Melody.

“What other thing was that?”

“The whisper—on Peters!”

“It's on its way,” said the younger Goldfish.

“Sure, sure!” exclaimed his father. “Sure, we slipped it to them—to the delegation when they came to see us.”

“Not too raw?” inquired Mr. solicitously.

“Sure not,” the older Goldfish reassured him. “Sure not. What do you take us for? Ain't we got experience in this work, longer than anybody in Chibosh? Sure we have. All we said was there might be a reason for his refusing that we might know, and could tell—only for the ethnics.”

“Professional ethics,” said Mr. I. Goldfish in correction.

“Sure, sure! The professional ethnics,” reasserted his father. “So we told them we couldn't tell them nothing about the real reason—the real personal reason why naturally he wouldn't be the counsel.”

“For any Unmarried Mothers' Justice Association.”

“Sure! Nor we couldn't talk neither about that young lady in black—that everybody was whispering of.”

Mr. Melody regarded him with unswerving attention.

“Unless they went and seen her themselves hanging around outside his house, across the street, from eight to nine.”

“Unless they should happen to get out and see her, so they'd know for themselves,” said Mr. I. Goldfish.

“By seeing what we couldn't tell them—without going and violating our professional honor and ethnics,” said his father.

“Have you got her ready yet?” asked Mr. Goldfish, Jr., of Mr. Melody

“She's coming in this afternoon,” replied the latter. “She'll be going on the job tonight. Do you want to see her? I can get her over now, I guess.”

“Sure, sure!” said Mr. A. Goldfish warmly.

“Let's look her over,” said his son.

Mr. Melody turned to a desk telephone.

“Get the Chibosh Theatrical Agency,” he said to his operator. “Tell them they can send her right over.”

It was not long before the one he was expecting came in. A slight girlish figure, she was dressed in an outer sport coat made of a stuff like an old-fashioned horse blanket, a close hat of tulip yellow, a tuniclike inner costume of henna color, encircled horizontally with black Egyptian figures bearing before them cups, pots and bows and arrows, and bright-green sandals over golden silk hose.

“This,” said Mr. Melody, introducing her, “is the young lady we were speaking of.”

“How de do,” said the young lady, languidly holding out a hand, half concealed by clustering rings, to Mr. A. Goldfish, who rose to shake it cordially, and bowing very slightly to Mr. I. Goldfish, who only slightly rose from his chair.

Sitting down, crossing her green-and-golden feet, she started the conversation herself.

“I give you my word,” she said, opening a small hand bag evidently containing a mirror, “I never took an act like this before.” Surveying herself with the mirror in the hand bag, she started powdering her nose. “I give you my word,” she said as she did so, “if I didn't have it from real food friends of mine that this was all right I'd never have considered it.”

“Sure not,” replied the sympathetic Mr. A. Goldfish.

“Nor given it one passing thought,” she asserted, turning her head, still surfacing her face.

“Sure, sure,” said the older Mr. Goldfish soothingly.

“I couldn't have, anyhow, as a usual thing, this time of year,” she went on, now arranging her hair. “I give you my word, nine times out of ten I'd been all took up this season of the year, out knocking them dead, in my regular part. I would be now if my manager hadn't seen fit to went and hauled me off a good engagement, all against my idea, and tried to send me out on the road. And would I stand for that?”

“No, no; sure not,” said Mr. A. Goldfish, laying a sympathetic hand upon her shoulder.

“I would not!” she said, temporarily completing her survey of her nose. “I give you my word ”

She did not complete her sentence, being interrupted by the younger Mr. Goldfish, now speaking for the first time.

“Come on!” said Mr. I. Goldfish briefly.

“Come on?” repeated the slight young actress, lowering her hand-bag mirror in surprise.

“Come on! Step out of the balloon!” said the younger Mr. Goldfish coldly. “Let's get down to business.”

Gazing suspiciously at him, the beautiful young actress put back her powder puff and again closed the mirror in the interior of her bag.

“Have you got your act all ready?” asked young Mr. Goldfish now in a brief, businesslike voice. “Can you start in tonight?”

“Between eight and nine?” she asked, still watching him intently.

“Across the street from the house that I'll show you?” said Mr. Melody, now entering the conversation.

“I never put on an act like this before, I give you my word,” said the young actress, looking now markedly at Mr. Melody and markedly away from the hard-eyed younger Mr. Goldfish. “I give you my word, I never done much mother work before. Why should I? I'm too young.”

“That's just it,” said Mr. Melody, reassuring her. “That's just why you fit in here.”

“The younger they are,” said the rounder, rosier, kinder-spoken Mr. Goldfish, “the harder they fall for them in this.”

“Just walking up and down, up and down, across the street?” she asked again, still in a skeptical spirit. “Is that all?”

“Positively.”

“And what'll I do if the police butt in?”

“They won't butt in,” said Mr. Melody very positively. “We'll see to that.”

“Say, look!” said the young actress, still questioning him, not once removing her eyes from his. “Is this thing on the level? Is it safe?”

“You know who sent you to us,” said Mr. Melody, reassuring her. “You can trust them, can't you?”

“Sure you can! Sure!” said the older Mr. Goldfish, again patting at her arm.

The slight, beautiful young actress seemed finally convinced.

“Well,” she asked at last, “when'll I get the baby?”

“Tonight, right here, at 7:30,” responded Mr. Melody.

“Sure, sure!” Mr. A. Goldfish corroborated him warmly. “Don't get worried. Don't get fits. It will be all right, positively.”

“And you'll wear black,” went on Mr. Melody; “and a heavy black veil.”

“And black—a black shawl for the baby,” added Mr. A. Goldfish.

“And scrape some of that off,” came in the hard voice of I. Goldfish.

“What off?” asked the slight young actress sharply, her voice suddenly grown harder—if anything—than his.

“That rose garden.”

“I give you my word—” said the young actress, now growing my angry.

“The complexion,” said Mr. I. Goldfish, breaking in, in brief explanation.

“She will. Sure, she will,” said Mr. Goldfish, Sr., quickly.

“You'll make up pale,” said Mr. Melody.

“Pale as white pinks in funeral hearses,” said Mr. Goldfish, Sr.

“I guess I know my business,” said the slight young actress with a slow ungracious glance at the younger Mr. Goldfish as, rising, she prepared to go.

HISPERS, rumors, scandals—who could count the great moral whispers that have gone forth from the political frame-up shops and publicity factories of this republic in the past few years, changing the face of history and the votes of cities, states and nations, for the strongest, highest moral reasons? Who can count the candidates who have gone down into untimely political graves, buried deep under an awful avalanche of winks, nods and whispers—especially in these past few critical years, when the coming of women to the polls has brought the higher moral standards of that sex into our public life?

Mr. Melody, sitting back, considering, after his dismissal of his attorneys, Goldfish & Goldfish, could not but be pleased with the whisper he was now sending out through the active medium of the so-called Umja, or Unmarried Mothers' Justice Association—to lisp from mouth to mouth through all those teeming millions of Chibosh until softly, without one printed or loud-spoken word, it should grip all those eager, restless minds with the conviction that John Henry Peters would never do for mayor of that great city; and, incidentally, save Mr. Melody himself from his pressing danger.

He was sitting thus, recanvassing his whispering campaign, more hopeful than for days, when his telephone bell called him.

“Mr. Melody?”

“Yes,” he answered, and his voice grew suddenly hoarse at the sweetness—the sweet, poisonous politeness of that voice upon the wire. It was, he could not fail to understand, the voice of the younger of those two extraordinary and menacing politicians with the card catalogue.

“Could you come over to our rooms?” it asked. “Right away? It is most important.”

“Right away, you say?” asked Mr. Melody, in a bitter and repellent voice.

“Please! Yes! It is most important,” repeated the softly modulated voice, and hesitated slightly before continuing. “For both us and you,” it went on, with that extreme and threatening politeness which was always so alarming to Mr. Melody.

“Especially you!” came the other and abrupter voice—of the other one who he might have known was working on their second telephone.

“All right. I'll come over right now,” he answered, always making it a point now to show how he was going along with them, and anxious, too, to learn quickly just what new thing those two had worked out on him now in their strange and novel method of approaching politics.

Very soon he was on their carpet in the room with the card-catalogue cabinet, and the strange drawings of strange, unnatural, rectangular human figures on the wall. Their greetings, though polite, were soon over with. “We thought perhaps,” said the younger and more dangerously polite one now, “that you would like to read this before we sent it.”

“Only fair you should,” said the jerky-spoken older one in the square clothes, who reminded him of his old-time grammar-school teacher.

Taking the yellow sheet offered by the younger, he read the telegram written on it:

The name of the younger one was signed.

“What—what the devil is this?” exclaimed Mr. Murphy-Melody, the sudden rush of his emotions breaking down his customary urbanity with the politer sex.

“You know without our informing you,” replied the older and less conciliatory of the two. The other gazed from beside her with the bright fresh interest of a young student in natural history at a new and unusual bug.

“I know what?” returned Mr. Melody huskily.

“You may tell us—all about it—if you wish,” said the younger and overpolite one. “Your side of it.”

“Tell you about what?” asked Mr. Melody, his voice both harsh and dry.

“About the young woman in black,” said one.

“And about Goldfish & Goldfish,” said the other.

“And the whispering campaign.”

“And how you thought you could put out a whispering campaign—anything so old as that—without our getting wise to it,” said the older one, now bursting unexpectedly into slang.

“After our being in the women's movement all these years,” the curly-headed one concluded.

“Say, where do you get this stuff?” inquired Mr. Melody, still holding them off, though very hoarse.

“I will tell you that, too,” replied the older woman, with a highly debonair and unconcerned gesture. “I chanced to be with the special committee of the Unmarried Mothers' Justice Association when it started to secure counsel.”

“When they met Goldfish & Goldfish, your attorneys,” said the one with the short curly hair.

“Quite early, when they started putting out your campaign whisper.”

“So we followed it all, from the beginning.”

“Oh, now I get you,” said Mr. Melody nimbly and smoothly, for he saw they had him. “Now I get you. And I'll explain it all to you—perfectly.”

He gazed from one to the other, wiping the sweat from his rounded forehead.

“That would be very nice, indeed,” said the young and polite one.

“But don't, please, stray away from the truth in doing so,” said the older and more severe.

The round light-blue eyes of Mr. Melody wavered and fell before hers as she regarded him. So he went on and told them the line-up—as much as he thought he had to.

“It was Chinese Meeghan,” pleaded Mr. Melody in self-defense. “I had to do it—that's all—or go back to prison!”

His voice shook. He was sorry for himself. He had never got cornered up like this before, nor ever heard of anyone who had.

“You would rather have us do it then?” asked the older and more direct.

“Send you back to prison, she means,” said the other, holding up the telegram in explanation.

Mr. Melody glanced from one to the other—that hard, polite, unpitying look upon their faces; the rows of books; the strange, unnatural, highbrow pictures on the wall; the big card catalogue where they kept that personal-record stuff on politicians that they were holding him up with. It seemed all strange, unnatural—a strange, unnatural dream, like nothing that had ever happened to any man in practical city politics before.

“Don't!” said Mr. Melody sharply. “Don't! I can fix everything. Nothing's really happened yet. She hasn't gone out yet—on her stunt.”

“The young lady in black, you mean?” the younger woman asked him.

“And her borrowed infant?”

“Yes; I'll stop her,” said Mr. Melody, and heard the other breaking in.

“You will not,” she said positively. “You won't stop her. You'll turn her around.”

Mr. Melody looked at her.

“Turn her around?” he repeated questioningly.

“The opposite way.”

“For us,” the other was explaining.

“As long as you have started this whispering campaign, you may as well keep it up,” said the older. “It has excellent possibilities; I can see that.”

“Unless,” said the younger, holding out her telegram once more, “you wish us to send this on.”

In all his life, in all his experiences with politicians, gorillas, vote getters, publicity experts, confidence men and forgers, he had never seen such soft, easy, politeness, so smooth a hold-up as this.

“It's your option, of course,” the older one advised him, “whether you do it or not.”

Mr. Melody looked from one hard face to another where they appeared now, on either side of that card-catalogue cabinet.

“And what would Chinese Meeghan be doing to me meanwhile?” he asked hoarsely.

“That isn't the question,” said one of them.

“What is?” asked Mr. Melody sharply.

“The question is,” said the older slowly, looking thoughtfully at him, “not what Meeghan will do to you but what we will do to Meeghan.”

“If you come along with us.”

“And with this!” said the other, striking her firm hand upon the card-catalogue cabinet—that keynote of the future politics  of the United States—what the six million organized women know today about the men politicians of the United States.

“Let her show you,” said the other.

And then the older started in reading him Chinese Meeghan's card—what the women had on the great boss who governed those who governed all Chibosh.

“You see,” said the younger one, “we'll be fighting him with his own weapons.”

“As we always have the men,” added the other; “as they always make us do.”

“I'm with you,” said Mr. Melody, his eyes and mouth still open, after listening to that card that they had on Meeghan. “Anything you want!”

“Even to putting him in jail?”

“I'm with you,” repeated Mr. Melody heartily, “all the time!” For he saw, of course, there was where his best, his only play lay.

“But can you do your part? Work up something good—in whispering campaigns?” the older one asked him.

“We wish to be sure of that,” said the younger, “before going ahead with you again.” And once more she waved that menacing telegram.

“We must have,” said the older, “something strong, something quite definitely raw.”

“Something new in publicity stunts.”

“New and quite definitely raw!” insisted the older. “Can you give it?”

“Can I!” exclaimed Mr. Melody, with a note of hearty promise in his voice.

“You see,” said the younger one, with that soft, sinister, cordial smile again, “what she wants—what we both want. We are ambitious. We want you to erect for us a real monument of imperishable poppycock such as has never been seen before, even in American city politics.”

“Raw—quite definitely raw!” demanded the older a third time.

“Lady,” said Mr. Melody very earnestly to her, “I'll give you a real one! With the poison you and I have got together, in that card-catalogue and what I know. I can sting that outfit so that in a month's time it will swell up and blow the roof off the city hall.”

“That will be fine,” said the older. “Fine!”

“Perfectly lovely,” said the younger one softly.

“You'll have to start at it right away.”

“With your poor young lady in black!”

“And double-cross the other side, right off.”

“As an evidence of good faith—to us!” said the younger, with that cordial, puzzling and ingratiating smile once more.

“You watch me spring it!” said Mr. Melody, for he already had it in his mind—the whole stunt all ready.

Leaving them at last, he went back to the Phantom Factory to complete his first effort along new lines. The now fully manufactured campaign whisper, though slightly deflected from its first market, was still on its way to the ultimate consumer—the great, restless, teeming voting population of Chibosh.

T WAS seven o'clock that evening in the Phantom Factory of Mayor True. All the force had gone long ago, except Mr. Melody.

Before him, below the right-hand portrait, a lean, sharp-faced, middle-aged woman held a violently crying baby.

“How long can he keep that up?” asked Mr. Melody, with a not unnatural interest.

“For days, I believe,” replied the hard-faced woman with a sharp, reddish nose.

Even without the baby, it would not have been difficult to recognize her as a nurse.

“For days, anyhow,” she added to her first statement as her charge went on. “Without a doubt.”

“I believe you,” said Mr. Melody.

The child cried violently, enthusiastically, burstingly, and yet—such are the provisions of Nature—apparently without damage or danger to itself.

“I got you what you wanted,” said the lean and disillusioned city nurse—“the loudest-lunged one in the Chibosh Orphan Asylum.”

“He'll do, I'll say,” responded Mr. Melody. “Now take him away, out into the anteroom, and lay him in the basket, and be back at 9:30,” he said, moving her along out, for he didn't want to have her meet the other one.

At 7:30 she came in again—that second one he was expecting—the slight, beautiful young actress of the morning, greatly changed in her make-up for her new act. Dark, weary, blue-black smears showed underneath her lovely eyes; her pale face showed white and delicate against her henna hair, the shabby sable of her dress and hat; against the heavy veil, which when lowered across her face was to serve at once to conceal her identity and to attract sharply by its mystery the attention of all who were to see her.

Standing in the anteroom to which Mr. Melody had admitted her, she gazed with disapproval upon the violent and angry-sounding infant in the large letter-file basket.

“I didn't contract to carry out a menagerie,” she said.

“It'll die down,” Mr. Melody reassured her. “It's quieter now already.”

“Listen,” said the young woman in black earnestly, “this is worth more money. And you know it!”

She stood, a pallid and pathetic figure, looking up at him.

“Come, cut that out!” responded Mr. Melody, for he knew all about her, how she was fixed; and he had a strangle hold politically on those who had sent her. “Let's go!”

There was no time now to fool with her.

Taking up the protesting infant, the young woman wrapped it ungraciously in her black shawl.

“His place,” she commented tersely as she did so, “is in the front end of an ocean liner in a fog.”

Mr. Melody was the only one of the three who was not markedly reluctant to proceed.

“Come on, let's go!” he said again; and led the way to the waiting taxicab underneath, the woman and the child in black following.

No voice was heard but the infant's in the progress of their vehicle until they had been driven nearly to their destination.

“I didn't know it was in this part of the town!” said the woman in black then, apparently surprised.

“Why not?” asked Mr. Melody, eying her in the fitful gleam of passing street lights in bland blankness.

“I thought you said another part of town entirely!”

“Oh, no,” said Mr. Melody. “You got me wrong.”

And now they were at the place, the corner where he had told the taxi driver to stop. Sitting within, he directed the young actress to the setting of her stage—the house upon the crossing street, across from which and before which she was to do her work.

“That one,” he said, “with the green door.”

The young actress started out slowly on her unusual act. The effect of her black gown and thickly hanging veil, in itself striking, was greatly heightened by her charge, the infant in black, protesting at another undesired change of scene more vigorously than before, if possible.

“And at 8:45,” said Mr. Melody, shortening the full hour somewhat, as a result of her expressed reluctance to go at all, “I'll be back here at this corner.”

“You'd better,” said the more and more reluctant young actress. “I'm fed up with this already. I give you my word, if it wasn't”

But Mr. Melody did not hear the remainder of her sentence. Returning rapidly to his car, he left her to her lonely vigil across from and before the residence of Herman J. True, mayor of Chibosh, and drove rapidly to his next task—to fill in his wait with the letter he must now frame and write with his own typewriter in the deserted Phantom Factory—alone with the brooding, extremely Roman-nosed campaign portraits of Mayor True, looking down from the shadows above his desk lamp.

This letter was anonymous, typewritten, directed to Mrs. Herman J. True—or Mother True, as she was so often known through the press, to the plain, honest voters of Chibosh. It said simply, under no place or date line:

It was an active night for Mr. Melody, the administration's press agent. After composing, writing and mailing this letter, securing once more the overwrought, excited and almost nervously prostrated young actress, and returning the now well-cried-out baby to the great orphan asylum of Chibosh, through the hard and skeptical-faced nurse that he had his political hold on. Mr. Melody closed and locked Room 913 not badly pleased with the progress of his whisper-making campaign for that day.

It was the middle of the next morning when the innermost door of the Phantom Factory of Mayor True swung back and let in Dorna Dare, the greatest lady newspaper investigator of Chibosh, and the closest political and social adviser of Mayor and Mrs. True. Her small thin mouth set tight, her eyes both smaller and brighter than usual, her close golden casque slightly awry upon her usually carefully groomed small head, she was clearly under some great excitement.

“Look what's here!” she exclaimed, as reaching into the handsome leather hand bag which she always carried she brought forth the typewritten note with which Mr. Melody was already so familiar:

His voice was suave and smooth; his round and china-blue eyes never wavered looking into hers.

“Justitia!” he said again, thoughtfully, but much surprised.

“You see?” said Dorna Dare, now pointing with her white-gloved finger to the opening sentence, “They got it right exactly—the thing you are going to have him talk about tomorrow night—the motto of the Umja!”

“The woman in black, huh?” said Mr. Melody to himself, still thoughtfully.

“That's nothing,” said Dorna Dare. “That's only half.”

“Half?” asked Mr. Melody, his round blue stare unchanged.

“There's a baby in black,” said Dorna Dare dramatically.

“A what?” cried Mr. Melody in keen surprise.

“So help me, prancing up and down the block for most an hour, bawling!”

“The baby, huh?” asked Mr. Melody, a glint of humor now returning to his astonished eyes.

“I'll say so, according to what she's been telling me—Mother True! They could hear it halfway across the city! And this crazy woman, all dressed up like the Ku Klux, only in jet black, walking up and down the street, and once starting to come up on the steps as if she was coming in.”

“Did she come?” asked Mr. Melody.

“No; just after that, she turned and hurried off, half running to a taxi that seemed to be standing at the corner.”

“She must be crazy,” commented Mr. Melody.

“That's what she thought—Mother last night, until she got this thing this morning,” said Dorna Dare, the social and political adviser of Mrs. True, pointing once more to the typewritten letter in Mr. Melody's hand.

“And what about her now?” the latter was asking.

“She's crazy herself now,” his informant told him. “You know how jealous she is of him, especially since he was elected mayor.”

“I know that.”

“But, fortunately, he wasn't home, and doesn't know about it yet. She came to me first, and I'm holding her off.”

“And you're right!' said Mr. Melody. “We can't have anything happen there now. She can't get on any of her jealous fits now, with the opening of the annual baby carnival coming on tomorrow.”

“I should say not,” said Dorna Dare, “after all these years we've put in, grooming them and getting them in line for the mother vote of Chibosh.”

So they framed it up between them—for her to hold her off while Mr. Melody looked out to see what he could do to keep the thing from as again. When she had gone Mr. Melody turned immediately to his telephone to carry out that idea. But he was unable to get in touch with the beautiful young actress at the Chibosh Theatrical Agency.

“She ain't come in today,” the telephone operator told him there. So for the moment he turned his attention to getting on the telephone the public nurse, who was in touch with the Chibosh Orphan Asylum.

“I want you to come over tonight,” he told her; “but you needn't bring along what you did before.”

“Thank heaven for that, too!” the hard, disillusioned voice of the public nurse came across the wire.

“I just want to talk to you.”

“I'll be there.”

When she was seated at 7:30 that night across from him, below the great Roman-nosed portrait of Mayor True when on guard for the people, alone with him in the Phantom Factory, he told her what he wanted.

“I've got to have another baby.”

“I told you so,” said the unfavorable-looking public nurse with a touch of personal pride. “I told you you couldn't stand that one.”

But he was disregarding her, going on.

“I want one this time,” he was saying, “with a Roman nose.”

“A what?” repeated the public nurse sharply, evidently both surprised and annoyed.

“Yep,” said Mr. Melody, calmly watching her.

“Do you know how often you find one?” asked the city nurse in a hard, dissatisfied voice.

“They have them, I know that,” said Mr. Melody. “I looked it up. And I know you'll find one somewhere, in an orphan asylum as big as that.” And he sent her off to get it. He knew she would, somehow. She'd have to with what he had on her, politically and other ways—on that bill for supplies.

When she had gone he tried again on the wire for that other one, the beautiful actress of the night before. He had to have her. The whole thing—the whole whisper—had to be completed on that next evening. Finally, after the thousandth time, he got her on the wire.

“Where were you? I thought you were coming around tonight,” he said.

“I can't. I ain't able to. I ain't been up all day. I give you my word, I ain't been able to lift my head from my pillow,” said the weak, almost pitiful voice of the young actress.

“But you said” began Mr. Melody.

But she went on, interrupting him.

“I'm done! I'm done!” called the young actress across the wire, talking now ever faster and faster. “I'm through! I'm through!”

“You are not! I'll come and get you!” said Mr. Melody.

“You will not! You will not!” cried the excited, feverish voice at the other end of the line, more and more distinctly hysterical. “I'm going out right now, somewhere else—where you'll never find me!” And suddenly he heard her slam her receiver down.

Mr. Melody sat speechless, motionless. Here was a new one! It must be delivered, that campaign whisper, without fail tomorrow night, at the opening of Baby Week in Chibosh—of Mayor True's annual carnival; or those two women—those insatiable women with the card catalogue—would without a doubt carry out that threat of theirs against him. He would be back in prison!

Sinking lower and lower in his chair in the Phantom Factory—below the melancholy and brooding pictures of Mayor True—Mr. Melody, the most carefully unknown man in Chibosh, realized at length his terrible situation.

It was impossible, at this late hour, to secure another agent, another person whom he could really trust with his delicate mission on the next night. He studied long and carefully, searching every corner of his subtle mind, but he saw at last there was but one escape—one thing only left that he could do. Mr. Melody himself—by the aid of the heavy veil, the cloak and other equipments that he could secure at some fancy dress or theatrical agency—must himself, tomorrow night, at the opening of the annual carnival of Mayor True's Baby Week, appear momentarily at least as the young mother in black.

Fortunately he was not a large man—still rather slender. Fortunately there was only that one moment at the entrance.

ABIES! Baby Week! The week of bigger, better, busier babies for Chibosh! All the billboards, all the street cars, all the minds and hearts of that great teeming panes simultaneously full of babies—baby likenesses, baby advertising, baby thoughts! The great urge of a great primitive emotion never once slackening! The memory or expectation that is so dear to all! Tears but thinly hidden beneath dimples!

In the section for thinkers of the Sunday Morning Truth an editorial in primer type entitled, A Little Child Shall Lead Them, had opened the reflections of the week. A cheery, chubby infant, leading a flesh-eating dinosaur on a leash, illustrated the child spirit leading the baser passions of mankind. The entire front page of Peoples Pictures was devoted to babies, unclothed.

In Great American Hall the great annual babies' carnival, under the auspices of Mayor and Mrs. True—the home family mayor of all the people, and Mother True, so called in all the journals when shown with all the photographs of her own children, or while wheeling her first grandchild.

Babies—a great hall full of babies! Of the health of babies, of the betterment of babies. A cholera-infantum microbe blown in glass, greatly magnified. Charts showing the chemical constituents of the food for babies; the bacteria in milk; the death rate in babies before and after the mayoralty of Mayor True—that sharp, jagged, descending line!

Prizes for babies, awarded on different days of Baby Week, the fattest baby, the cutest baby, the most comical baby, the blackest baby, the whitest baby, the best baby not alone in the great city but in North Chibosh, East Chibosh, South Chibosh and West Chibosh, and most of the individual wards!

Also booths for the display of babies' merchandise, of babies' food, of babies' toys, furnishings and attire! Booths also for the various societies on babies, with literature for the taking—Mayor True's Babies' Eye and Ear Society, the True Mothers' League, the True Women Home Defenders, the so-called Umja, or Unmarried Mothers' Justice Association, with its motto above, between its flags, in large blue letters:

And in the middle of it all—the great central booth—babies under glass! A great hothouse of babies in all possible stages of dress and undress—cooing, kicking, gurgling, dimpling, howling—being dressed, undressed, weighed, smoothed, rumpled, poked, examined and reëxamined by bright-eyes mothers and  grandmothers, aunts; by hard-eyed doctors and weary nurses, whose emotions had been fed up with babies years ago! Babies of all kinds and colors displayed for the continuous contests, and awards for the best in the scientifically arranged classes intended to include all the babies of Chibosh.

It was that evening, before the awarding of the most interesting prize of that opening Wednesday, for the cheeriest and most comical baby in Chibosh, that the first of the more formal addresses of the carnival were given—among them, towards the end, the brief word of welcome to the last born of the mothers' societies in the exhibit, the so-called Umja, or Unmarried Mothers' Justice Association, by Herman J. True, the mayor of the city of Chibosh, to whose humanitarian forethought for the plain, honest voters this annual event owed its being.

He was introduced, amid huge applause, by Dr. George Barclay Beagles, the great expert on babies, who had already given the main address of the evening on Our Mayor's Term in Terms of Babies.

Simple, massive, strong, with his impressive, massive mustache, and his still more impressive Roman nose, the mayor of the metropolis removed slowly from the bosom of his black frock coat and put upon his heavy nose the glasses with which he always read his typewritten speeches. The subject of his address on this occasion was obvious, and the immense audience listened in a silence broken only by the squeals and gurgles of their babies to his scholarly and finished address on the motto of the new mothers' society—Justice for All Women.

“Ladies,” he was reading, as he turned the last of his typewritten pages, “your motto, the new ideal brought by you into the light and life of this nation, will henceforth be emblazoned not only on the soft and pitying hearts of the women and mothers but upon the proud escutcheon of our proud and just republic.

“Justice for all women—poor as well as rich, black as well as white, erring as well as pure; justice, justice—the least as well as the most that can be given man or woman—justice for all women. Such must be the watchword of our future, of our civilization, if civilization as we know it is to survive. Justice, justice for all women!”

And now, lowering his manuscript, he showed that he was done with it, and yet was about to speak on. Clearing his throat, he removed his glasses, and it was evident that the mayor of the great metropolis was about to speak extemporaneously, without manuscript; give in a parting sentence one of those grave, honest, personal notes for which he was so famous. He did so, pushing his lips impressively outward so as to reach with his voice every corner of the immense hall.

“The man that wrote them words for the women,” said Mayor True, with sincere feeling, “was a regular feller!” And he sat down in a tumult of applause, in which many babies joined.

The president of the society he had been welcoming, Mrs. J. Henry Fogel, answered briefly, after this had subsided, being introduced briefly by the society's general counsel, Mr. A. Goldfish, the well-known lawyer and politician.

It was soon after this that there came the concluding exercises of the day—the awarding of the first of the prizes of Baby Week, with the production of the prize winners in the arms of Herman J. True, the domestic family mayor, who stood with his wife, Mother True, in the great central glass inclosure of the babies before a sliding window opened for the purpose.

No one who saw them could doubt what they were. She, the quiet, strong, sturdy, domestic wife, in modest-colored but substantial clothes, and an almost homemade hat. He, strong, honest, serious, sincere. His silk hat placed beside him upon the nearest resting place, a scale for weighing babies, his frock coat open, he held the last and chief prize winner of the day—the most comical baby in Chibosh—in his right arm, with a practiced and confident ease, while in his left hand he held the short typewritten speech, which spoke feelingly, though in simple terms, of the simple joys of home, of babies—of one home but many babies.

Those hearing him had never felt his sincerity, his perfect single-minded honesty, so convincingly, or seen the gravity of his heavy, strong-jawed, Roman-profiled face to such advantage as while bending over reading his sincere speech, in close contrast to the cheerful, noseless, most comical baby in Chibosh, who, in the arms of the chief executive of the great city, was living up most cheerfully to its reputation.

The mayor had finished this last exercise and the press about the open window of the hothouse of the babies was about to disperse, when it was perceived by the audience that another baby—not mentioned in the program—was in his arms; a most unusual baby—the nearer ones who had a good look at it said afterwards—a baby with a definitely convex, or Roman, nose.

It was the voice of Mother True, the mayor's wife, which was first heard to speak, calling clearly and sharply to the nurse who had laid the infant in his arms.

“What's this?” it asked.

“I dunno,” replied the disillusioned and weary professional nurse. “She said you'd know.”

“Who said?” asked Mayor and Mother True, as one speaker.

“The woman—the mother.”

“What woman?”

“I dunno. The one who said you'd know,” reiterated the nurse, without emotion. “The one in black.”

A quick, an electric energy rang in the voice of Mother True, the wife of the chief executive of Chibosh. “The woman in black! Who? Where is she? What was she like?” was asked sharply.

“All in black, and a thick black veil. That's all I could see,” said the nurse in a weary routine voice, the voice of one so tired out with tending babies that nothing really matters now. “Kind of big and clumsy. With a hoarse voice—kind of like a man, and kind of nervous. But you couldn't see her face, with that big black thick veil.”

But her questioner was apparently no longer hearing her.

“Go on,” she was calling. “Go get her.”

“Get her!” replied the public nurse, with the stout obstinacy of extreme weariness. “How can I get her? She just shoved it into my arms, and said you'd know, and went back into the crowd, here, five minutes ago.”

A short investigation showed that this was true. The mother in black was lost, swallowed up in that immense expectant crowd about the great central hothouse of the babies.

Mayor True stood holding the strangely profiled baby with the microscopic but indubitably Roman nose. Puzzled, patient, the family mayor of Chibosh waited with benign, sincere cordiality for the solution of the mystery about this last belated and unknown prize winner.

It was his wife, the earnest, serious, almost savage-faced woman who had been so rigidly studying the child, who at last discovered the clew to this mystery. Looking keenly over the face and then the person of the unknown infant, she suddenly reached forward and plucked from the front of his dress a note—a typewritten note, in a plain cheap envelope.

In this, as often in cases of great public catastrophe, testimony upon exact minor details differed. But there was no dispute about the great main fact, seen by all. Having read this letter, standing beside him in the glass hothouse of the prize-winning babies of Chibosh, the wife of the chief executive of that great teeming city a sturdy, heavy-faced figure—was pounding her husband; pounding him upon his head, his face, his unprotected Roman nose, as he leaned forward, amazed, undefended, trying to protect the innocent, yelling, defenseless Roman-nosed infant in his arms from her ill-controlled blows. And meanwhile she was calling—as they understood her—something about the motto and subject of the evening, Justice for All Women.

“Justice!” they thought she said. “Justice for women! I'm going to have some—right now—in my own family!”

Trampled under their feet was the note, which was picked up when finally they controlled her—a typewritten note, on which she had read:

The attendants now closed the glass window in the glass inclosure in the center of the great hall.

That was all that they could do. There were no shades in it.

OLDFISH & GOLDFISH, the political attorneys, sat again on Thursday morning in the Phantom Factory of Mayor True, one on either side, addressing Mr. Melody.

“An awful night! An awful night!” said A. Goldfish. “It was all we could do to keep it out of one of the papers.”

“Of all of them, you mean,” said his son.

“If one ran it the others would, naturally,” said Mr. Melody.

His round eyes were as calm, his hair as carefully brushed, his voice as carefully bland as ever. He was safe; he had pulled through his great danger; he had delivered successfully, at great personal risk, that campaign whisper to the women voters of Chibosh demanded by those insatiable women politicians, who now controlled him. For the moment he was at ease, his own calm, confident self again—in sharp contrast to Mr. A. Goldfish, who was still speaking of the newspapers of Chibosh.

“And all of them—all night—with extra reporters on the morgues and police stations. And still are. And all the police on all the docks and bridges, to grab her and keep her—that woman of black! And bringing in at least two hundred of them—them women in black dresses they got all over—into all the stations all night long! For if that went on, if she done it—and croaked herself—why, naturally, then ail the papers would be printing it—would have to print it then!” exclaimed the older and more demonstrative Goldfish.

“You tell me just what happened!” ordered the younger and less demonstrative Goldfish, now leaning forward in the direction of Mr. Melody.

“Don't you know that yet?” Mr. Melody asked him calmly.

“Know what?” asked the harder Mr. I. Goldfish, his voice still hard, suspicious. “What happened?” he asked again.

“You happened,” said Mr. Melody briefly. “That's what happened.”

“Me!” “Him!” cried Goldfish & Goldfish simultaneously.

“Sure,” said Mr. Melody. “Don't you see that yet?”

“See what?”

“You got her sore—the girl, that's all. The way you talked to her that day. She went over to the other side. That's all. And they used her—to pull our own stunt—against us.”

The voice of Mr. A. Goldfish, answering alone, was warm with genuine admiration.

“Some stunt!” it said. “Some whispering campaign! But who”

“What'll we do now?” the voice of I. Goldfish was interrupting him. He could see—without a map—what might be coming to him if Chinese Meeghan once got hold of that idea.

“I'll tell you what you'll do: You'll leave it to me!” the calm, confident voice of Mr. Melody was answering him. “You spilled the beans. Now you'll leave it to me—to fix up for you!”

Exactly what Mr. Melody did following this promise to Goldfish & Goldfish cannot be related here today. There is not enough space. It will, however, positively be shown in the coming sequel—the forthcoming story of The Thumbless Black Hand, or The Coming of Gonfardino.

Editor's Note—This is the third of a series of five stories by Mr. Turner. The next will appear in an early issue.