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Page 86
"Oh, I don't want to hear about their old company," snapped out
Gordon, pacing up and down in despair. "What am I to do? that's what I
want to know. Here I have the whole country stirred up and begging for
news. On their knees for it, and a cable all to myself, and the only
man on the spot, and nothing to say. I'd just like to know how long
that German idiot intends to wait before he begins shelling this town
and killing people. He has put me in a most absurd position."
"Here's a message for you, Gordon," said Stedman, with business-like
calm. "Albert Gordon, correspondent," he read. "Try American consul.
First message O.K.; beat the country; can take all you send. Give
names of foreign residents massacred, and fuller account blowing up
palace. Dodge."
The expression on Gordon's face as this message was slowly read off to
him, had changed from one of gratified pride to one of puzzled
consternation.
"What's he mean by foreign residents massacred, and blowing up of
palace?" asked Stedman, looking over his shoulder anxiously. "Who is
Dodge?"
"Dodge is the night editor," said Gordon, nervously. "They must have
read my message wrong. You sent just what I gave you, didn't you?" he
asked.
"Of course I did," said Stedman, indignantly.
"I didn't say anything about the massacre of anybody, did I?" asked
Gordon. "I hope they are not improving on my account. What _am_ I
to do? This is getting awful. I'll have to go out and kill a few
people myself. Oh, why don't that Dutch captain begin to do something!
What sort of a fighter does he call himself? He wouldn't shoot at a
school of porpoises. He's not--"
"Here comes a message to Leonard T. Travis, American consul, Opeki,"
read Stedman. "It's raining messages to-day. 'Send full details of
massacre of American citizens by German sailors.' Secretary of--great
Scott!" gasped Stedman, interrupting himself and gazing at his
instrument with horrified fascination--"the Secretary of State."
"That settles it," roared Gordon, pulling at his hair and burying his
face in his hands. "I have _got_ to kill some of them now."
"Albert Gordon, correspondent," read Stedman, impressively, like the
voice of Fate. "Is Colonel Thomas Bradley, commanding native forces
at Opeki, Colonel Sir Thomas Kent-Bradley of Crimean war fame?
Correspondent London _Times_, San Francisco Press Club."
"Go on, go on!" said Gordon, desperately. "I'm getting used to it now.
Go on!"
"American consul, Opeki," read Stedman. "Home Secretary desires you to
furnish list of names English residents killed during shelling of
Opeki by ship of war _Kaiser_, and estimate of amount property
destroyed. Stoughton, British Embassy, Washington."
"Stedman!" cried Gordon, jumping to his feet, "there's a mistake here
somewhere. These people cannot all have made my message read like
that. Some one has altered it, and now I have got to make these people
here live up to that message, whether they like being massacred and
blown up or not. Don't answer any of those messages except the one
from Dodge; tell him things have quieted down a bit, and that I'll
send four thousand words on the flight of the natives from the
village, and their encampment at the foot of the mountains, and of the
exploring party we have sent out to look for the German vessel; and
now I am going out to make something happen."
Gordon said that he would be gone for two hours at least, and as
Stedman did not feel capable of receiving any more nerve-stirring
messages, he cut off all connection with Octavia by saying, "Good-by
for two hours," and running away from the office. He sat down on a
rock on the beach, and mopped his face with his handkerchief.
"After a man has taken nothing more exciting than weather reports from
Octavia for a year," he soliloquized, "it's a bit disturbing to have
all the crowned heads of Europe and their secretaries calling upon you
for details of a massacre that never came off."
At the end of two hours Gordon returned from the consulate with a mass
of manuscript in his hand.
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