Codes

Authors of “The Boomer,” etc.

The world of the telegraph man is strange to many a man in the street, but offers romance and excitement to those who know it.

The fellow, DeMars, blew into the operating room of the National Consolidated Telegraphs at Los Angeles late one autumn afternoon. He talked two minutes with the chief operator, and went to work that night on second Chicago, a wire conceded generally among the operators as the fastest in the house.

DeMars, dark and slender, had a penchant for fine raiment. He wore his stylish suits and haberdashery in a distinctive manner not often found, among drifting “ops” and wire-men, whose working hours are spent amid the deafening din of the operating room with the fingers of the right hand steadily hammering a telegraph key and the fingers of the left simultaneously “marking off” messages with a pencil. DeMars wore a small mustache, up-curled in a foreign style. He could easily have passed as a Frenchman of wealth. But his speech was distinctly American.

“Say, girlie; how about a show tonight?” he had addressed June Harmon, typist to McPhail, the chief operator, on his second day. “I’m new to this town, and I’d like to see some of the life. They say there’s a keen orchestra at the Cinderella.”

June Harmon was accustomed to turning down proffered entertainment, and took no offense at DeMars’s rather precipitate invitation. She only smiled and shook her head. “I don’t go out nights,” she said decisively.

“Of course you don’t,” scoffed DeMars. “None of you girls do.”

“Some of us don’t.” And she bent over her work.

“Oh, well, there’s plenty that will,” he answered defensively.

“Indeed there are,” June had replied pleasantly.

DeMars shrugged and turned back to his own desk.

June Harmon, modish and pretty, carried beneath her outward softness a sophistication gained in the six years since the death of her father who had once been chief in that very room. With a younger brother who, until the last few years, had been dependent upon her, and a sweet mother at home, June had managed the family finances and affairs. It had not been an easy task and now, though barely twenty-four, she was a woman capable of taking care of herself in any kind of company and still maintaining her poise. June Harmon was straightforward, companionable and honest, always ready with a smile for the newest messenger-boy, or the loan of carfare to some over-spent old operator.

From her vantage point as McPhail’s typist she could cast an appraising eye over every operator in the room. Of them all she would have preferred any before Hugo DeMars as a companion to her brother Ralph, who had but lately graduated from the student class into the way wires. But, like the usual run of ops who drifted into the National Consolidated, DeMars had made rapid acquaintances among his fellow workers. His was an attractive personality, and he a liberal spender. Gradually his circle had narrowed until Ralph Harmon remained as his especial crony. They usually lunched together at the little dairy counter downstairs, and were often together nights.

June cautioned her brother about it. “Ralph,” she said, “I wish you wouldn’t run with DeMars so much. He isn’t doing you any good. Besides, I don’t like his--well, his looks.”

“Well, I do,” retorted the boy impatiently. “You’re always butting in on who I go with and who I don’t. Hugo DeMars is all right. He’s been all over the world, and he knows more about the telegraph business in a minute than old Andy McPhail or any of the rest of ’em in a week. And that’s not all. I’m going with his sister now; that’s where I was last night. Hugo introduced me to her. She’s just about my age, and she’s a pippin.”

“Oh, how romantic.” June elevated her brows in mock wonder, and she eyed her eighteen-year-old brother humorously. “And so it is an affair of the heart?”

“Aw-w-w, you don’t know nothin’,” Ralph grumbled. “Mignonne DeMars has it all over most girls for looks. She doesn’t know anybody in this town and she’s lonesome.”

“I see,” remarked June thoughtfully, but with a twinkle. “And you’re the lucky one. Her brother Hugo has been looking the boys over for someone with the class to be worth while introducing to her and he has picked you.” June dropped her bantering tone and became friendly, almost motherly. “I’d like to see her myself, sometime. Can’t you bring her around to the house sometime when mamma and I can fix up a little party? We can have some of our crowd in and we’ll make Mignonne feel more as if she were among friends.”

Ralph’s reply was unenthusiastic, but he warmed toward his sister. June’s little parties always turned out pretty well, but he wasn’t just sure how Mignonne De Mars would like a cozy home party. Mignonne seemed rather to prefer a good show or a lively dance orchestra. Ralph was trying to create an impression with her, that he was older than he looked; a man of much worldly experience. And he felt that one of June’s parties, given in their own home with his mother present, would serve to break down that illusion.

“Mignonne is the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen,” he told June, by way of evading direct reply as to when he could bring his divinity to a home party, “and she’s just the kind of a girl a fellow can pal around with. She works at the Mutual Trust--she’s a steno--and she knows money doesn’t grow on bushes and doesn’t try to spend a fellow like some of these girls. All she wants is a good friend she can trust.”

“That’s fine,” June encouraged him. “I’m sure we’ll all love to meet her.”

“I’ll say you will,” Ralph prophesied, leaving the time for the meeting rather vague. For somehow he felt that maybe, after all, Mignonne was a year or two--well, maybe three or four, his senior. And both June and his mother always preferred that he go with girls his own age or younger.

DeMars’s entry into the Los Angeles telegraph office was followed two weeks later by that of another newcomer. The new man was plainly a “boomer.” Two shifts and everybody knew all the places he had worked, the positions he had held, and what kind of tobacco he liked. He was a stalwart, genial young man, and “flagged” under the name Clyde Winship. He had come out from the Chicago office when the winter began to settle over the lake. The old-timers looked up from their keys out of faded watery eyes and harked back to the days when they, too, were young and followed the whims of itinerant fancy, booming on to warmer climes when winter threatened.

The young operators on the job took Winship in tow and showed him the joint where he could get good roast beef for a quarter and took him to the Seneca Hotel “where all the boys stay.” From the first Winship seemed to take an especial interest in DeMars, and also in Ralph Harmon. But the two, DeMars at first, then later, Ralph, avoided his advances as though their own acquaintance was enough and they considered the newcomer an interloper. Gradually Winship’s attention began to center about June Harmon, and he took to sidling over to her desk at every opportunity. Two weeks after his entry in the big office he asked for a date.

“There’s a good show out at the Stadium,” he addressed June diffidently. “It’s a big pageant, the Wayside Cross, and they all say it’s worth seeing. I’d like to see it and I wish you’d go with me?”

June shook her head. “I--I don’t go out much,” she said kindly.

Winship’s face fell. “Well,” he countered, “you’ll go sometime--with me--uh, some place, won’t you?”

June had to smile at that. “Possibly.”

“I hope so,” he said earnestly.

The next day he again approached her. “Maybe you’ll let me come up to your home some evening and see you?”

“Oh, you see enough of me right here.” June Harmon did not care for friendships formed upon short acquaintance. She had seen too many such affairs end disastrously.

“I don’t see enough of you,” he insisted stubbornly.

But her only reply was a bright smile as she turned back to her desk. He went soberly to his own. At noon Winship contrived to meet Ralph alone in the cloakroom as they went out on their twenty-minute “short” for lunch.

“Ralph, I’ve been wanting to tell you something,” he began quietly. “Briefly it’s this: That fellow DeMars is too fast for a young fellow like you to try to follow. Take my advice and lay off of him. You’re liable to contract expensive habits.”

“Aw, what’d you know about it?” frowned Ralph. “Where’d you butt in on who I go around with, I’d like to know?”

“Oh, I just didn’t like to see a youngster like you hitting too fast a gait.”

“Well, don’t worry yourself sick about my gait,” Ralph sneered, as he grabbed up his hat and coat. He shot from the place bound for the little cafe where he and Mignonne cozily lunched each day.