Dreiser, Theodore, 1871-1945; Journalists -- United States -- Biography; Novelists, American -- 20th century -- Biography
And in the course of time he did change his mind. Some of the fakers had
to be arrested and fined and their places closed up, and the longer we
talked and exposed the worse it became for them. Finally a dealer
approached me one morning and offered me an eighteen-carat gold watch,
to be selected by me from any jewelry store in the city and paid for by
him, if I would let his store alone. I refused. Another, a dark, dusty,
most amusing little Jew, offered me a diamond pin, insisting upon
sticking it in my cravat, and said: “Go see! Go see! Ask any jeweler
what he thinks, if that ain’t a real stone! If it ain’t—if he says
no—bring it back to me and I’ll give you a hundred dollars in cash for
it. Don’t you mention me no more now. Be a nice young feller now. I’m a
hard-workin’ man just like anybody else. I run a honest place.”
I carried the pin back to the office and gave it to McEnnis. He stared
at me in amazement.
“Why did you do this?” he exclaimed. “You shouldn’t have taken this, at
all. It may get the paper in trouble. They may have had witnesses to
this—but maybe not. Perhaps this fellow is just trying to protect
himself. Anyway, we’re going to take this thing back to him and don’t
take anything more, do you hear, money or anything. You can’t do that
sort of thing. If I didn’t think you were honest I’d fire you right
now.”
He took me into the office of the editor-in-chief, who looked at me with
still, gray-blue eyes and listened to my story. He dismissed me and
talked with McEnnis for a while. When the latter came out he exclaimed
triumphantly: “He sees that you’re honest, all right, and he’s tickled
to death. Now we’ll take this pin back, and then you’ll write out the
whole story just as it happened.”
On the way we went to a magistrate to swear out a charge of attempted
bribery against this man, and later in the same day I went with the
detective to serve the warrant. To myself I seemed to be swimming in a
delicious sea of life. “What a fine thing life is!” I thought. “Here I
am getting along famously because I can write. Soon I will get more
money, and maybe some day people will begin to hear of me. I will get a
fine reputation in the newspaper world.”
Thanks to this vigorous campaign, of which McEnnis was the inspiration
and guiding spirit, all these auction shops were eventually closed. In
so much at least John B. MacDonald had achieved a revenge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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