"And that weapon is what?" asked Drayton.
"Silence. Absolute, utter silence. Silence is the loudest thing in the world. It thunders louder than the thunder. And it's the deadliest. What drives men mad who are put in solitary confinement? The darkness? The solitude? Well, they help. But it's silence that does the trick—silence that roars in their ears until it cracks their eardrums and addles their brains."
"Mallard is a national peril, we'll concede. Very well then, he should be destroyed. And the surest, quickest, best way for the newspapers to destroy him is to wall him up in silence, to put a vacuum bell of silence down over him, to lock him up in silence, to bury him alive in silence. And that's a simpler thing than it sounds. They have all of them, only to do one little thing—just quit printing his name."
"But they can't quit printing his name, Quinlan!" exclaimed Drayton. "Mallard's news; he's the biggest figure in the news that there is to-day in this country."
"That's the same foolish argument that the average newspaper man would make," said Quinlan scornfully. "Mallard is news because the newspapers make news of him—and for no other reason. Let them quit, and he isn't news any more—he's a nonentity, he's nothing at all, he's null and he's void. So far as public opinion goes he will cease to exist, and a thing that has ceased to exist is no longer news—once you've printed the funeral notice. Every popular thing, every conspicuous thing in the world is born of notoriety and fed on notoriety—newspaper notoriety. Notoriety is as essential to the object of notoriety itself as it is in fashioning the sentiments of those who read about it. And there's just one place where you can get wholesale, nation-wide notoriety to-day—out of the jaws of a printing press.
"We call baseball our national pastime—granted! But let the newspapers, all of them, during one month of this coming spring, quit printing a word about baseball, and you'd see the parks closed up and the weeds growing on the base lines and the turnstiles rusting solid. You remember those deluded ladies who almost did the cause of suffrage some damage last year by picketing the White House and bothering the President when he was busy with the biggest job that any man had tackled in this country since Abe Lincoln? Remember how they raised such a hullabaloo when they were sent to the workhouse? Well, suppose the newspapers, instead of giving them front-page headlines and columns of space every day, had refused to print a line about them or even so much as to mention their names. Do you believe they would have stuck to the job week after week as they did stick to it? I tell you they'd have quit cold inside of forty-eight hours.
"Son, your average latter-day martyr endures his captivity with fortitude because he knows the world, through the papers, is going to hear the pleasant clanking of his chains. Otherwise he'd burst from his cell with a disappointed yell and go out of the martyr business instanter. He may not fear the gallows or the stake or the pillory, but he certainly does love his press notices. He may or may not keep the faith, but you can bet he always keeps a scrapbook. Silence—that's the thing he fears more than hangman's nooses or firing squads.
"And that's the cure for your friend, Jason Mallard, Esquire. Let the press of this country put the curse of silence on him and he's done for. Silence will kill off his cause and kill off his following and kill him off. It will kill him politically and figuratively. I'm not sure, knowing the man as I do, but what it will kill him actually. Entomb him in silence and he'll be a body of death and corruption in two weeks. Just let the newspapers and the magazines provide the grave, and the corpse will provide itself."
Drayton felt himself catching the fever of Quinlan's fire. He broke in eagerly.
"But, Quinlan, how could it be done?" he asked. "How could you get concerted action for a thing that's so revolutionary, so unprecedented, so–"
"This happens to be one time in the history of the United States when you could get it," said the inebriate. "You could get it because the press is practically united to-day in favour of real Americanism. Let some man like your editor-in-chief, Fred Core, or like Carlos Seers of the Era, or Manuel Oxus of the Period, or Malcolm Flint of the A.P. call a private meeting in New York of the biggest individual publishers of daily papers and the leading magazine publishers and the heads of all the press associations and news syndicates, from the big fellows clear down to the shops that sell boiler plate to the country weeklies with patent insides. Through their concerted influence that crowd could put the thing over in twenty-four hours. They could line up the Authors' League, line up the defence societies, line up the national advertisers, line up organised labour in the printing trades—line up everybody and everything worth while. Oh, it could be done—make no mistake about that. Call it a boycott; call it coercion, mob law, lynch law, anything you please—it's justifiable. And there'd be no way out for Mallard. He couldn't bring an injunction suit to make a newspaper publisher print his name. He couldn't buy advertising space to tell about himself if nobody would sell it to him. There's only one thing he could do—and if I'm any judge he'd do it, sooner or later."
Young Drayton stood up. His eyes were blazing.
"Do you know what I'm going to do, Quinlan?" he asked. "I'm going to run up to New York on the midnight train. If I can't get a berth on a sleeper I'll sit up in a day coach. I'm going to rout Fred Core out of bed before breakfast time in the morning and put this thing up to him just as you've put it up to me here to-night. If I can make him see it as you've made me see it, he'll get busy. If he doesn't see it, there's no harm done. But in any event it's your idea, and I'll see to it that you're not cheated out of the credit for it."
The dipsomaniac shook his head. The flame of inspiration had died out in Quinlan; he was a dead crater again—a drunkard quivering for the lack of stimulant.
"Never mind the credit, son. What was it wise old Omar said—'Take the cash and let the credit go'?—something like that anyhow. You run along up to New York and kindle the fires. But before you start I wish you'd loan me about two dollars. Some of these days when my luck changes I'll pay it all back. I'm keeping track of what I owe you. Or say, Drayton—make it five dollars, won't you, if you can spare it?"
Beforehand there was no announcement of the purpose to be accomplished. The men in charge of the plan and the men directly under them, whom they privily commissioned to carry out their intent, were all of them sworn to secrecy. And all of them kept the pledge. On a Monday Congressman Mallard's name appeared in practically every daily paper in America, for it was on that evening that he was to address a mass meeting at a hall on the Lower West Side of New York—a meeting ostensibly to be held under the auspices of a so-called society for world peace. But sometime during Monday every publisher of every newspaper and periodical, of every trade paper, every religious paper, every farm paper in America, received a telegram from a certain address in New York. This telegram was marked Confidential. It was signed by a formidable list of names. It was signed by three of the most distinguished editors in America; by the heads of all the important news-gathering and news-distributing agencies; by the responsible heads of the leading feature syndicates; by the presidents of the two principal telegraph companies; by the presidents of the biggest advertising agencies; by a former President of the United States; by a great Catholic dignitary; by a great Protestant evangelist, and by the most eloquent rabbi in America; by the head of the largest banking house on this continent; by a retired military officer of the highest rank; by a national leader of organised labour; by the presidents of four of the leading universities; and finally by a man who, though a private citizen, was popularly esteemed to be the mouthpiece of the National Administration.
While this blanket telegram was travelling over the wires a certain magazine publisher was stopping his presses to throw out a special article for the writing of which he had paid fifteen hundred dollars to the best satirical essayist in the country; and another publisher was countermanding the order he had given to a distinguished caricaturist for a series of cartoons all dealing with the same subject, and was tearing up two of the cartoons which had already been delivered and for which he already had paid. He offered to pay for the cartoons not yet drawn, but the artist declined to accept further payment when he was told in confidence the reason for the cancellation of the commission.
On a Monday morning Congressman Jason Mallard's name was in every paper; his picture was in many of them. On the day following– But I am getting ahead of my story. Monday evening comes before Tuesday morning, and first I should tell what befell on Monday evening down on the Lower West Side.
That Monday afternoon Mallard came up from Washington; only his secretary came with him. Three men—the owner of a publication lately suppressed by the Post Office Department for seditious utterances, a former clergyman whose attitude in the present crisis had cost him his pulpit, and a former college professor of avowedly anarchistic tendencies—met him at the Pennsylvania Station. Of the three only the clergyman had a name which bespoke Anglo-Saxon ancestry. These three men accompanied him to the home of the editor, where they dined together; and when the dinner was ended an automobile bore the party through a heavy snowstorm to the hall where Mallard was to speak.