Chapter VI: “star” Reporting

I now began to get nothing but big stories to cover. Frequently I was permitted to select my own assignments and often to create them.

As an illustration of what I mean by creating an assignment, I once clipped a five-line item from an evening paper about a band of regulators in southern Indiana that were masking themselves and taking out men and women who were loose in their moral conduct, tying them to trees and whipping them with hickory switches.

I traveled all day and night to get to the scene of their activities and was rewarded by witnessing, the first night I was there, the most brutal public punishment that could be inflicted. The community was made up of conspicuously ignorant people, and like most men and women who are densely ignorant and uncouth, they were harshly intolerant in dealing with the weaknesses of others. If a man wouldn’t work and neglected his family, they took him out at night and whipped him until he couldn’t work. The regulators were no respecters of sex and the week before I got there they stripped and cruelly punished a woman who didn’t care for her husband and children as they considered she should.

The night of my arrival I was awakened after midnight by a vigorous pounding on the front door of my hotel. A battering ram drove the door from its hinges and a crowd of men came stamping up the stairway. A door was smashed in, a woman screamed in terror, there was a struggle and loud curses in the hallway, and then I heard them all going down stairs and I knew they were dragging a man and a woman with them. Peeping out of the window, I saw in the bright moonlight that more than fifty stalwart men were grouped in front of the hotel and that every one wore an enormous white mask, which was simply a flour-sack, with slits for eyes and nose, the sack pulled over the head and bunched on the shoulders.

The man and woman, still struggling, were dragged out and quickly surrounded. The party then marched with their victims to a clump of trees, where they were stripped of their night clothes, tied to trees and unmercifully whipped with long switches.

After administering the punishment, the crowd melted slowly and silently away. I talked with the victims when they crawled back to the hotel, their backs lacerated. I learned from them that both were married but living apart from their lawful mates and that anonymous notes had come to them in the last week, threatening them with a visit from the “whip-ups” if they didn’t reform their ways. I spent two days getting stories about this new method of reforming folk and when I got back to Chicago I wrote a page article, giving the band the name of “white-caps,” a name they themselves speedily adopted.

I visited another band of so-called regulators of public morals some time afterward. They had taken a young girl who was running wild, into a vacant lot, stripped off her clothing and covering her with a coat of hot tar and a bagful of feathers, drove her away into the night. I reached the place the following day, found the terrified girl hiding in a limestone quarry, got her story and provided her with clothing and shelter. She was only seventeen. A church deacon who boastfully admitted that he was leader of the ruffians, gave me a list of all who participated in the outrage and I furnished it to the prosecuting attorney, together with sufficient evidence to indict them. Some were sent to prison and the remainder paid heavy fines. I caused the girl to be placed in an institution. I never knew how she turned out.

Once I witnessed the hanging of six murderers from the same scaffold in the old Federal prison at Fort Smith, Arkansas. They were all outlaws from the Indian Territory. At another time I was on a passenger train in Missouri when it was held up and robbed, after the bandits had blown up the locomotive with dynamite. They looted the passengers and carried away a lot of plunder from the express car, shooting and severely wounding the messenger. After the train robbers escaped, I telegraphed five columns about it in time to catch the regular edition.

Another time I followed a daring opium smuggler over the Canadian border, after he had escaped from treasury agents, and interviewed him in a hotel. He talked freely to me about his adventures, but in all the time I was with him he kept a revolver pointed at me. He apologized for his rudeness, said he didn’t doubt that I was a newspaper man, but that he couldn’t afford to run risks of being captured. He had taken desperate chances the night before in attempting to visit his mother and had narrowly escaped with his life. For years he had been the most successful smuggler of opium operating along the Canadian border, belonging to a ring that had its headquarters on Vancouver Island. The duty on opium was then ten dollars a pound and smugglers found traffic in the drug more lucrative than robbing banks. Treasury agents had been after this elusive fellow for a long time, but although they were often close upon him they always failed of capture. A big reward was offered for his arrest.

Somehow the treasury men got word that he intended visiting his mother at her home in Michigan and a posse was organized to head him off and get him, dead or alive. The posse hid in the woods near the home of the smuggler’s mother, felling a tree across the roadway to block his progress. It was a bright moonlight night when they discovered him riding alone through the woods on horseback. When he came to the obstruction in the road, a voice commanded him to halt and surrender. As he wheeled his horse to make a dash for liberty, six men rose out of the bushes and blazed away with their weapons. The horse dropped dead in his tracks, the rider under him. With six Federal officers, all armed and ready to shoot, almost on top of him, the nervy smuggler dragged himself from under the dead horse, darted into a thicket and lost himself in the shadows. Making his way to the river, he found a boat and crossed to the Canadian shore. I interviewed him the following day.

The most singular experience I ever had and one that I have never been able to explain satisfactorily even to myself, came to me on the day the Anarchists were hanged. I had been among the earliest newspaper men to reach the Haymarket after the bomb scattered death among a squad of policemen sent there to disperse that meeting of Reds, and I was active in the rounding up of the leaders and the long trial that followed.

I was assigned to write the story of the execution. It was a nerve-straining task, for I had known all of them for years and had frequently reported their meetings, long before anyone suspected they were anything more than harmless cranks.

The night before the execution, I was among a large number of newspaper men that kept the death watch on the condemned and one of the first to reach the cell of Louis Ling, when he cheated the hangman by blowing off his head with a dynamite cartridge, exploding the cartridge between his teeth.

After a night of sleepless excitement, we newspaper men and the spectators that held cards of admission, were summoned to the execution chamber and I saw the unfortunate wretches I had known so well drop into eternity with broken necks. I had witnessed many executions but this was the most horrible. When it was over I was nauseated and so faint I could scarcely drag myself to the street. With others, I went to a nearby saloon and asked for brandy. I drank the stuff and then came oblivion. In all the years since I have never been able to recall what happened to me afterward, not even leaving the saloon.

When I recovered my senses I was in my bed at home. The rising sun streamed through the window and I awoke with a start. It was six o’clock in the morning. Then came the humiliating remorse of a drunkard. I had always proven dependable in every emergency, but now I had fallen down and forever disgraced myself. Worst of all, the editor who had trusted me must have had a difficult time whipping a story together when I failed to return to the office. I felt he could never forgive me and I buried my face in the pillow and cried.

At last I got up and dressed, so ashamed of what had happened that I sneaked silently out of the house, hurrying down the street to find a paper-carrier and ascertain how my paper had fared when I so treacherously betrayed it. I bought a complete set of all the various morning papers and eagerly began scanning the _Tribune_.

As I read the story I grew more and more puzzled. The introduction was precisely as I had planned to write it and the story described everything just as my eyes had seen what had taken place. There were sentences that were undeniably mine. I was completely mystified, but my mind was greatly relieved. It was apparent that even if I had failed in my duty, the paper hadn’t suffered. The story was complete and was written as well as I could have done it. Perhaps I had written it and was now suffering from a trick of memory. I wondered if that could be possible.

Hurrying back to my home, I encountered the maid and asked her what time it was when I got in the night before. She said it was shortly after ten o’clock and that I looked so pale and tired she was worried about me. I searched her face in an effort to discover whether she suspected that I was intoxicated, but her eyes beamed nothing but sympathy. After breakfast I decided to go to the office and face the music. In the elevator, I encountered Mr. Patterson.

“You wrote a fine story of the execution,” he said, putting his arm affectionately around me and giving my body a hug.

I thanked him with as much modesty as I could assume, but I was too uncertain about what had happened to prolong the conversation. Perhaps the city editor had concealed from his superior that I had fallen down on the assignment, until he could have a talk with me.

The only way to find out was to put on a bold front, so I walked into the local room and bade the city editor a cheery “good morning.”

Mr. Hall’s response set my mind at rest. He praised my story unstintedly and was particularly gratified that I had turned the last of the copy over to him before nine. I next went to the proofreaders’ room and found the copy I had so unconsciously written. There was no indication of trembling fingers, nor were there scratched-out words to betray unsteadiness of mind. I had never written more perfect copy.

By cautious inquiry, I learned that I took but a single drink after the execution and I then went straight to the _Tribune_ office, locked myself in a room and wrote steadily for eight hours without a break. The only way I can account for my interruption of memory is that I was weary from excitement and loss of sleep, but automatically kept at the task before me until it was accomplished and when it was and I had a chance to think about myself, my tired brain collapsed and went dead. An expert psychologist might explain it differently. I can’t.

Someone telephoned to the office one day that a large lake vessel, laden with lumber, had been driven ashore near Miller’s Station, a small village in northern Indiana. The informant said a storm was raging and he could see the crew clinging to the rigging, frantically waving distress signals. I called up the Chicago life-saving station and was told they were as busy as hornets looking after vessels that were in trouble off the harbor. The captain said the best he could do would be to send one of his men with me. I met his man “Ed” at the Michigan Central.

The first train out was the Limited. I knew it didn’t stop at Miller’s, which was only a flag station, but I took a chance and we got on the rear platform of the last sleeper. As we neared Miller’s I jerked the cord that released the air brakes and when the train slackened, “Ed” and I hopped off and ran away as fast as our legs could carry us, followed by curses from the angry trainmen.

It was a walk of three miles through sand that was ankle deep to the scene of the wreck. We found the vessel had pounded to pieces in the breakers, drowning all but one of her crew. The shore was strewn with wreckage and lumber and the entire population of the village, men and women, was gathering and carting it away. They told us that the only survivor had been taken to a clubhouse, two miles away.

“Ed” had on his life-saver uniform of blue, with gilt buttons, and I made him pretend that he was an officer, intimidating a man with a team to quit beach combing long enough to haul us to the club. The survivor gave a graphic recital of the wreck and we trudged through the sand to the railway station, only to find there were no more trains to the city until morning. I wrote a story for the paper, but the “plug” operator at the station was so slow that I had to turn in and send most of it myself after I had finished writing. There was no hotel. The operator said he would gladly invite us to his house if two of his children weren’t sick with scarlet fever.

“Ed” and I went out into the murky night to hunt for lodgings. There was a single light glimmering from a small shack of a house. All the rest of the village was dark. We made for the light and a belligerent, red-faced woman opened the door wide enough to get a glimpse of the gilt buttons on “Ed’s” uniform. She may have thought we had come to arrest them for carting away lumber from the wreck. Anyway, she would have slammed the door in our faces if my companion hadn’t interfered with his foot. We pushed our way into the house, for it was bitter cold and raining cats and dogs. I offered to pay a dollar if she would shelter us for the night. The silver dollar brought hospitality and she led us to the attic, where there was a dirty mattress and dirtier bedding, in one corner on the floor. I dropped on it as I was, wet clothing and all, and was soon fast asleep. When I awoke in the morning “Ed” wasn’t there. From behind a curtain that was stretched across the attic, came sounds of suppressed giggling and on reconnoitering I discovered that the venturesome life-saver had found playmates, daughters of our hostess.

There was another time when a tip came by telephone of a vessel in distress off Hyde Park. It was nearly midnight when I got there. A few helpless men were gathered impotently on the shore, watching the blazing signals as the crew set fire to oil-soaked bedding and cast it into the lake. I had the idlers build a bonfire on the beach to let the wrecked sailors know that help was coming, and hurried to a telephone to notify the life-saving station. I kept the fire blazing all night and the sailors kept signaling until they used up everything combustible.

It was daylight when the life-savers came with their boat on a wagon. They had driven nearly fifteen miles. The boat was launched and was quickly propelled through the breakers to the stranded vessel. I went with them. As we approached the wreck the sailors dropped into the lake and were picked up. The last to be rescued was the captain. I asked his name. It was the same as mine. If it had been Jones or Smith I don’t suppose I would now recall the incident, for it was two months prior to the assassination of Garfield and that was thirty-nine years ago. I knew the crazy slayer of our martyred President when he was a lawyer in Chicago. His half-brother was one of my boyhood friends.

The last important story I wrote for the _Tribune_ was a pitiful domestic tragedy that culminated in a brain-tortured wife shooting her faithless husband dead in my arms. As I recall the exciting events that were woven into the story I wrote that Christmas eve, long years ago, I am reminded of Joe McCullagh’s definition of journalism. He was the famous editor of the St. Louis _Globe-Democrat_ for many years, terminating a brilliant career by plunging headlong from an upper window of his home early one morning, breaking his neck. In delivering a lecture before a body of university students, he defined journalism as “the art of knowing where hell is going to break loose next and having a reporter on the spot to cover it.”

I chanced to be the reporter on the spot when the pent-up hell that was blazing in a woman’s brain broke loose. The story I wrote is indelibly fastened in my memory. I would have forgotten it if I could.

One day I ran into Magistrate Prindiville during the noon recess and he told me that he had just issued warrants for the arrest of a business man and the latter’s sister-in-law. He thought it might prove an interesting story for the paper and suggested that I come to his courtroom after the principals had been arrested and get the details. All that he could tell then was that a few minutes before, an excited little woman, accompanied by an excited brother, had obtained warrants for the arrest of the woman’s husband and the brother’s wife. It was a complicated case of infidelity. Officers were to make the arrests during the afternoon. The magistrate returned to his court long enough for me to copy names and addresses. The man to be arrested was William McCauley; the woman was Molly Mackin.

I learned in the city directory that McCauley was office manager of a big brewing plant on the West Side and there I went in hopes of obtaining the story before he was locked up. At the brewery I was told he had gone away that day for his annual vacation. They gave me his home address, a flat building in a quiet little residential street called Arthington Place. When I pressed a button in the lower vestibule, a woman appeared at the head of the staircase on the floor above and inquired what I wished.

“I have called to see Mr. McCauley,” I said.

“What is the nature of your business?”

“It is entirely personal. Kindly tell him that a _Tribune_ reporter is calling.”

“A reporter, I thought so. You may come up.”

She held the door open and motioned me into the parlor. As I entered a man came from a side room and confronted me. He was a handsome chap, about thirty years old, big and muscular. The woman followed into the parlor and stood there as if eager to know what I intended asking her husband, perhaps more eager to know how he would reply.

Her presence was so embarrassing I asked the man if I could see him alone. He waved me toward the room he had just come from and followed me into it. Without closing the door he brusquely demanded what I wanted. I hardly knew myself. I had to go at it almost blindly.

“I have come to ask about Mrs. Mackin,” I venturingly began.

“What do you want to know?” was the angry response. He was visibly agitated and was making an effort to control himself. His face grew scarlet. “What about Mrs. Mack----”

The name died on his lips. Before he could complete it his wife appeared in the open doorway with a revolver in her outstretched hand. His back was to the door; I was facing it. Before I could warn him or stop her, she pointed the revolver at the back of his head and pressed the trigger.

There was a flash of flame and the man sank limply into my arms with a bullet in his brain. He never knew, unless his spirit saw me struggling with the woman when it left his body. She made as if to fire another shot, so I let him down to the floor and grabbed her wrist, wresting the weapon from her hand.

“Why did you do this dreadful thing?” I asked.

“Because he has wrecked all of our lives.”

I heard little children crying with fright.

“Our children,” she sobbed. “What will become of them?”

The dying man groaned and there were choking sounds in his throat. I asked where I could find the nearest doctor.

“Don’t call one. He mustn’t live! It would be horrible after all he has done.”

There appeared to be no likelihood of a doctor being of service, but I went after one. A maid was shaking a rug under the window where the shooting had taken place, but she evidently hadn’t heard the shot, for she calmly directed me to the home of a nearby physician. The doctor wasn’t in but his wife said she expected him any minute and she would send him or telephone for another. I told her the case was urgent.

When I got back to the McCauley apartment the front door had been bolted from the inside. There was no response to my knocking. Something must have given me the strength of a stevedore, for I threw myself against the door and burst the lock. I found Mrs. McCauley in the kitchen with her children. She had a knife and was about to use it when I took the knife from her hand.

McCauley was still crumpled up where I left him. I rolled him on his back and put a pillow under his head, for there was still a flicker of life. The queer gurgling sounds in his throat were growing less distinct and I knew he would soon be done for.

Mrs. McCauley watched him with apathetic calmness. She made no attempt to help, except to bring a flask of liquor when requested. I tried to force some of it down his throat, hoping to keep him alive until the doctors came, but his teeth were tightly clenched and I was unable to pry them apart.

While waiting for the doctors she told her story, told it so simply and with such pathos that it stirred my sympathy more than any story of human suffering I ever listened to. Two doctors came in the midst of the recital, but she went on with it to the end.

William McCauley, son of a wealthy widow, had been educated for the priesthood but before the time came for his induction his mind changed and he went into business. He had grown prosperous when he met Ida Mackin, a school-teacher, and when they were married and settled in a pretty home, there wasn’t a cloud to mar their happiness. Two children were born and everything was serene. Along came Molly! She entered their lives when she became the bride of sturdy Harry Mackin, Mrs. McCauley’s brother. She was as pretty as a doll and almost as brainless. The families saw much of each other, though they lived apart. McCauley supplied the capital to start Harry in business. Soon Molly had a baby. And they all were as happy as they could be. Then something happened.

When Harry Mackin went home from the store one evening Molly was gone. Pinned to a chair was a note in Molly’s familiar handwriting. She had gone away with the baby and would never return. She asked to be forgotten as one unworthy. The note stunned him. They had never quarreled and he had toiled unceasingly that Molly might have all the finery her heart craved.

He hurried to the home of her mother, but found no trace of Molly or baby and next he burst into the home of his sister and sobbed his grief into her sympathetic ears. It was as mystifying to her as it was to him, for she and Molly had been as intimate as sisters and she had never heard a word of discontent. William McCauley came home and pretended great astonishment at what they told him. There was no way of explaining what Molly had done. McCauley suggested hiring detectives and went with Harry to an agency, directing that no expense be spared in searching for the runaway wife.

Weeks went by without trace of Molly or baby. The detectives could find nothing that might help to solve the mystery of her disappearance. The husband searched frantically day and night, neglecting his business and growing thin and pale with loss of sleep and anxiety. McCauley was ever sympathetic. He directed the activities of the detectives and spent hours with the grieving husband as they blindly searched every part of the city where she might be hiding. Finally, he declared that Molly must have lost her mind and plunged into the lake with her baby in her arms. There seemed no other solution.

Time dragged wearily along for young Mackin, until one evening he unexpectedly ran into his brother-in-law in the street. McCauley was carrying bottles of wine and was walking so hurriedly he passed Harry without recognition. The following day Harry had luncheon with his sister and asked for a glass of wine. There was none in the house.

“Didn’t Will bring some home last night?” he asked.

“Will hasn’t been home for three days. He is out of town on business.”

The first suspicion that had ever come to him of his brother-in-law’s perfidy burned its way into Harry Mackin’s brain. He recalled that McCauley had been frequently away from home of late. Business had been the excuse. That evening he was hidden in a shadow when McCauley left the brewery and hurried away. Harry followed on the opposite side of the street and never lost sight of him. McCauley turned into Sangamon Street, stopped in front of a flat, fumbled in his pocket for a key and let himself in.

Harry saw a woman, with a baby in her arms, appear at an upper window and draw down the shade. Then he saw the shadow of a man and woman embracing silhouette on the curtain. It was his own wife and child, for whom he had been searching until he was almost insane.

His impulse was to burst in the door and get revenge, but another thought came and he hurried to his sister and told her of his discovery. It made clear to her why her husband had been from home so much of late on what he called important business. She suggested that they go together to the Sangamon Street flat and kill them. The brother counseled waiting until morning, when he would have them arrested and sent to prison, a punishment that would be worse than death, he argued. All that night, with bruised hearts and tortured minds, they cried aloud in their misery, while William McCauley and Molly Mackin slept peacefully, without a thought of the tragedy that was soon to come.

In the morning brother and sister went to Magistrate Prindiville and procured warrants, hurrying on ahead of the officers, so as to be there when the arrests were made. It was arranged that Harry should watch in front of the flat in Sangamon Street and Mrs. McCauley return to her home, that she might be there if her husband came. When he went away, McCauley had promised to be back that morning. While passing a pawnshop she saw a revolver in the window. Impulsively she went in and bought it. The pawnbroker loaded the weapon and showed her how to use it.

When she got home her husband was there. She told him that his perfidy had been uncovered and he made no denial. He no longer cared for her, he said, for he loved only Molly and he and Molly were planning to go far away, where they could be happy and secure in each other’s love. He would share his savings with his wife to provide for herself and the children.

It was then I rang the doorbell.

McCauley died before she had finished telling me her story. Officers came soon after that, sent the body to the morgue and took her to the police station.

Before leaving the flat I ransacked the family album for photographs of all concerned in the tragedy. Then I hurried over to the Sangamon Street house, ahead of the officers and interviewed Molly. Harry came while we were talking and I had to restrain him from harming her. We all went to the courtroom, where I explained to Magistrate Prindiville what had happened. At my request he consented to release Molly on bail furnished by her husband.

Harry said he would “see her in hell” before he would sign her bond, but when I suggested that it might be prudent to do what I asked, considering that I was the only witness to the killing of McCauley, he yielded.

I knew that no other reporter had the story and I proceeded to bottle it up so tightly they couldn’t get it. I sent Molly away in a cab to a place where she couldn’t be found. Harry was similarly disposed of. Mrs. McCauley had collapsed before they got her to the police station and was under the care of a doctor. Magistrate Prindiville told me he was leaving the city immediately, to be gone over the holidays. There was no one left to feed the story to other reporters except--me.

I wrote five columns that night that appeared on the front page, with photographs of the principals and their children. No other paper contained more than the police could tell and that was almost nothing.

At the inquest, two days later, Mrs. McCauley was too prostrated to tell her story but I related it just as she had told it to me, giving at the same time a description of what had happened from the time I first entered the McCauley flat. The jury set her free without leaving their seats. Not long afterward she and her two children were found dead in bed. She had turned on the gas.

Molly Mackin I saw a year later on the stage of a cheap vaudeville theatre. A magician was performing a trick he called “The Sleeping Beauty.” The beauty I recognized as the frail and foolish Molly. I don’t know what became of Harry.