Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 81, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1920 — WHEN BILLY ITCHED [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WHEN BILLY ITCHED

By WILL T. AMES

(Copyright. 1»1», by th* MoClur* H*wspap*r Syndicate.) “Sandersoh says if you’ll draw a diagram of that story on your desk he’ll have the new high school cub rewrite it. You're sure going strong with the old man, Itchy.” “Oh, you go chase yourself!” Billy Harbury wasn’t very much stronger on repartee tjian he was in the construction of his laboriously written news stories. But there was considerable feeling in the glance that he. bent on the grinning Jones, the city hall man. These was no need of Jones piling it on. Billy was sensitive enough about his falling, and the blue-penciled message scrawled across the whole first page of the “copy” on his desk —“Rewrite 1” —required no interpretation by outsiders. Harbury’s nickname alone would have served to spoil a worse temper than his. “Itchy.” Somehow suggestive of Indifference to the cleanliness next to godliness, of some kind of personal, physical taint, of a slum origin, it was a deuce of a name, Billy often thought, to have wished onto a freshfaced, immaculate, daily bathed boy who had been brought up in a good home and never forgotten the days thereof! But one day in the first weeks of his cubdom Billy had dug up a peach of a story along the docks about a schooner then in port which turned out to have had a most amazing but authentic history of blockade running, gun smuggling and the like. Billy wrote the story, and therein he referred to the schooner, interchangeably as “it” and “she,” just as the words happened to come off his type-

writer. The copy desk on the Herald was a bit of a joke, and Sanderson, the city editor, was in the midst of a first edition rush, so the story got by as written. It was an awful mess of pronouns, with its conflicting repetitions of “it” and “she.” The staff needed but about forty seconds to evolve “it-she” Into "Itchy” — and Billy' Harbury was dubbed. , But if Billy’s nickname reflected paucity in the gift of expression, the reputation he had gained in his two on the Herald was far from being one for stupidity. He was the paper’s’ very best natural sleuth, a born digger after evasive facts, an engineer gifted with resourcefulness In following the merest color of exclusive news back to the mother lode of glorious "scoops.” The boys in the office railed at his bungling use of the president’s American, but they took off their hats to him when it came to “getting the stuff.” Having rewritten the story and turned it in to Sanderson, who grunted something to the effect of the rewrite being not quite so horrible, Billy hurried away to his police “beat.” Besides headquarters he had to cover three precincts, and it was half past nine when he dropped off an East side car in front of the “hard boiled” station house. Medley, the. lieutenant in charge, was questioning a girl as the reporter entered the station. The girl was not an unusual type. Thin, cheaply dressed, of no particular complexion, the only noticeable things about her were her uncommonly fine eyes and her clean, neatly cared for hair, which was almost black. She looked chronically worried and harassed. Billy had a vague impression that he had seen her before —but that generally means that you have just happened to notice the person in a street car. Presently the lieutenant dismissed the girl, Who departed. Billy looked inquiringly at the policeman. “No story there,” cautioned Medley. “No chhrge against her; not even a suspect. Mrs. Shanahan, around the corner on Grove, came in here and asked me to have a talk with the girl; she' lodges there. Said the girl lost her job in one of those .North end garment shops two weeks ago and hasn’t hardly been out of her room since. The old lady thinks she hasn’t had anything to eat but crackers and milk this week, and worried. “I sent Briggs to ask her to step

tn here, thinking she might be nutty; but she talks straight enough. Secretive as the devil, though. Calls herself Swain. Guess she’s got ji good education. I didn’t get anything out •f her.” Billy knew the lieutenant well enough to be sure that he was keeping nothing up his sleeve. It was probably merely a case of a well-brought-up but incapable girl fallen on UI times, who had lost her nerve but not her pride. Young as he was the boy had run across more than one such case in his police station experience. But as he hopped a car for the fourth precinct Billy was still thinking about that girl and the haunting resemblance. Ten seconds after that he had hopped off the oar again in the middle of the block and was on his way to Grove street on a run. Billy had remembered something—a newspaper photograph of many weeks ago. Mrs. Shanahan’s was easy to find, and the persuasive Billy induced that reluctant lady to take him up to her lodger’s room and introduce him to her in his correct character as a representative of the Herald. The lodger, whom they found sitting at the window of her stuffy room, hadn’t a chance to escape the interview. Billy opened up the instant Mrs. Shanahan was gone. “You are Beatrice Orton.” It was a statement, not a question. The girl looked at Billy stonily. “For three months the police of the country have been hunting for you, and your stiff-necked father has given you up as dead. Meantime you have been hiding under a disguise that nut one woman in ten thousand of your class could successfully assume —that of an ordinary working girl. You could, because you worked in the settlements and know them.” Still there was no reply. The girl looked out of the window. “I know what none of the rest of them know —-that you didn’t even see fit to let your father know —‘that your disappearance is due to'revulsion over .vhat you thought you had found out about Chester Alling.” The girl rose from Iwr chair. “I shall ask you to leave —” she began. “Presently,” interrupted Billy. “But Chet Alling happens to have been my best friend on earth, and I have a duty to perform toward him.” “As a newspaper reporter?” There was icy sarcasm in the girl’s tone. “Newspapers be blowed. As a man and as a friend. Listen. Alling’s father, as you know, was a legal adviser off the American peace conferees. He had possession of certain knowledge on the treaty, documentary stuff: it

would have been of untold value to a political clique in Washington. It watt known that the one person who could steal that information was Chester. They knew he was beyond approach. So they plotted to compromise him with that Baroness Colgney, with three or four of her clique of crooked adventurers as witnesses. Then they peddled the news to you, through two hands, secretly. Also they let Chester know that if he would get the documents for them they would swear that the whole business was a rotten lie—as it was. Of course Chester refused— ; and then you beat it without giving him a chance to talk.” The girl had gone white. “But why didn’t somebody—how do I know you are not the liar? You are a newspaper man, are you not? Why didn’t you print this story —\fhy didn’t anybody?" “Because it couldn’t be proved—legally. They could outswear Alling five or six to*'one. And besides the newspapers don’t know It. Haven’t , you any faith at all? Do you *now that Chester Alling has done absolutely nothing for three months but hunt for you while you have been eating your heart out and ruining your health in this mad escapade of the'sulks?” “What —what shall I do?” “Stay here for <%ie day and let me wire to Chet. Will you do that?” “Yes; oh, oh, yes! It has been awful ! Awful!” Billy sent the wire and then he went back tp the office and justified his nickname. He itched —Itched all over to write the best scoop that ever came into the Herald office. But he didn’t. Chester Alling was his best friend.

“You are Beatrice Orton.”