New York (State) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Deaths from the wheeled torpedoes that shoot along the city streets are
too monotonously numerous to make a stir in the newspapers unless the
victims have some other claim on the public attention.
Gilfoyle had been writing advertisements of other people's wares, but
nobody was going to pay for the advertisement of him. The things that
he might have become were even more obscure than the things he was. The
pity of his taking-off would have had no more record than a few lines of
small type, but for one further accident.
The taxicab-driver whose reckless haste had sent him down the wrong
side of the street had been spurred on by the reckless haste of his
passenger. The pretty Mrs. Twyford had been for years encouraging the
reporters to emphasize her social altitude, and had seen that they
obtained her photographs at frequent intervals. But on this night she
had gone up-town upon one of the few affairs for which she did not wish
publicity. She had learned by telephone that her husband had returned
to New York unexpectedly, and she was intensely impatient to be at home
when he got there.
When her scudding taxicab solved all of Gilfoyle's earthly problems in
one fierce erasure she made such efforts to escape from the instantly
gathered crowd that she attracted the attention of the policeman who
happened to be at the next corner. He proceeded to take the name
and addresses of witnesses and principals, and he detained her as an
important accessory.
Connery was one of the news-men who had been indebted to Mrs. Twyford
for many a half-column of gossip, and he recognized her at once. He was
a reporter, first, last, and all the time, and he was very much in need
of something to sell.
He was greatly shattered by the annihilation of his friend, but his
instinctive journalism led him to control himself long enough to call
Mrs. Twyford by name and assure the policeman that she was a lady of
high degree who should not be bothered.
Neither the policeman nor Mrs. Twyford thanked him. They were equally
rude to him and to each other, Connery thought the incident might
interest the night city editor of his paper, and so he telephoned a
good story in to the office as soon as he had released himself from the
inquisition and had seen an ambulance carry poor Gilfoyle away.
Mrs. Twyford reached home too late, and in such a state of nerves that
she made the most unconvincing replies to the cross-examination that
ensued. When she saw her name in the paper the next morning her friends
also began to make inquiries--and eventually to deny that they were her
friends or had ever been.
It was her name in the heavy type that caught the heavy eyes of Jim
Dyckman at breakfast the next morning. It was thus that he came upon
the fate of Thomas Gilfoyle, whose death had been the cause of all this
pother.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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