On a Wednesday afternoon, Caroline was in the compositor’s room, studying the next day’s front page with her printer. A cat slept on the window-sill, oblivious to the noises of Market Square. In the next room she could hear Trimble’s voice, coaxing an advertiser. Disloyally, Caroline moved from the first to the third page a story concerning the Virgin Islands, which Hay thought that the United States might be obliged to buy from Denmark for the five million dollars made available by the Senate, courtesy of Senator Lodge. A robbery in the West End, specifically Connecticut Avenue, took the place of the Virgin Islands, and one Mrs. Benedict Tracy Bingham was now world-famous-or capitally famous-for having been robbed during the night of her diamonds. Caroline had inserted the adjective “fabulous” before the word “diamonds,” despite the objection of the elderly reporter, who had said, “They were just run-of-the-mill stuff, Miss Sanford. A pin. A ring. Earrings.”
“But aren’t the Binghams rich?” Caroline toyed with the notion of a crime ring: “Connecticut Avenue’s Reign of Terror” she saw a headline (as usual, with her, too long); then a sub-headline: “Where will the thieves strike next?”
“The Binghams own the Silversmith Dairies. They advertise with us, or used to. Yes, ma’am, they’re rich enough. But the jewels-”
“Priceless heirlooms of one of Washington’s oldest and most aristocratic families,” Caroline had added to the story. “If that does not delight the Binghams, nothing will,” she said to Trimble, who was amused but dubious, as always, of her inspirations. “We shall be awash with milk advertising,” she promised now that Mrs. Benedict Tracy Bingham’s jewels were about to be first-page news, and her place in the city’s highly fluid patriciate inscribed boldly if not in a book of gold in meaningful type-set.
The black doorkeeper stood in the doorway. “There’s a gentleman, Miss, who wants to talk to the publishers, to Mr. Vardeman.”
“What about?” Caroline picked up an engraving of the Bing-ham mansion; and indicated that it was to be at the center of the column.
“He says he’s from Mr. Hearst. His name’s the same as yours, Miss.”
Caroline stood up straight; seized the nearest of many rags and rubbed, as best she could, the ink smudges from her fingers. “Did you tell him who the publisher is?”
“No, ma’am. He was pretty clear he wanted to see Mr. Vardeman.”
“I’ll see him in the office.” Caroline had taken for herself a small dim room overlooking the printing shed in the brick yard. A framed copy of her first front page was behind the modest desk (“Body of unknown beauty found nude at Navy Yard”). Two incongruous Louis XVI chairs were the only furniture in the room. The spring’s first flies made mid-air carousels.
Blaise was satisfyingly astonished. “What are you doing here? Where’s Vardeman?”
“Mr. Vardeman is devoting his time to genealogy. He is descended from Thomas Jefferson, he believes, which gives the two of us a lot to talk about…”
“You bought the Trib?”
“I bought the Trib.”
They faced one another: implacable enemies as only the identical can be. “You did this to spite me.”
“Or delight me. Sit down, Blaise.”
Sulkily, he turned the gilded chair backwards and straddled it as if he were riding a horse. Demurely, she sat at her desk, strewn with unpaid bills. She wished now that she had paid more attention to Mlle. Souvestre’s excellent but dull teacher of mathematics.
“How much,” asked Blaise, “did it cost you?”
“Two or three Poussins.”
“My pictures!”
“Our pictures. I shall pay you your share, of course, when you give me my share of-”
“That’s for the lawyers.” Blaise was looking about the dismal office. Caroline was pleased at the amount of squalor she could endure. She regretted that she had not followed her first impulse to hang on the wall a lurid four-color portrait of Admiral Dewey, with the legend “Our Hero.”
“You can’t be serious,” said Blaise.
“I’ve never understood why whenever someone is truly serious, someone always says that. Of course I’m serious. I am,” Caroline lowered her lashes shyly, the way Helen Hay did when the waiter brought around dessert, “working here, as publisher and editor, just like Mr. Hearst.”
Blaise laughed, without joy. He had seen the framed front page; and guessed that it was her work. “There’s more to this than murders,” he said.
“Yes. There’s Mrs. Hearst’s money to pay his debts. Or was. She goes back to California. She will not help him any longer.”
“Who’ll pay your debts? The old Trib loses money like a sieve.”
“I suppose that I will. From the estate.”
Blaise swept the gold chair to one side; and walked over to the window and stared through the fly-specked glass at the print shop beneath. “That makes money. The paper loses it.” He turned around. “How much do you want?”
“I’m not selling.”
“Everything has its price.”
Caroline laughed. “You’ve been in New York too long! That’s the sort of thing very fat men say at Rector’s. But not everything is for sale. The Tribune’s mine.”
“Mr. Hearst will pay you double what you paid, which must have been around fifty thousand dollars.”
“He hasn’t got the money, I know. I have met his mother.”
“One hundred fifty thousand dollars.” Blaise sat on the window-sill. He wore a light gray coat which was now, visibly, beginning to darken from the room’s dust. “For everything. That’s three times what this wreck of a paper’s worth.”
Caroline thought Blaise uncommonly attractive at this moment. Anger was his invigorating emotion. What was her own? Time would answer that, she decided; and then she made Blaise gloriously beautiful, by turning mere anger to plain fury with the words: “You don’t want to buy this for Mr. Hearst. You want to buy it for yourself. You are double, as the fat men say at Rector’s, crossing him.”
“Damn you!” Blaise sprang from the window-sill. The back of his gray frock coat veined with spider-webs and the mummies of a dozen flies who had found in the Tribune ‚s window frame their final Egypt.
“I might-if you stop damning me-let you have half the paper if you let me have my half of the…”
“Blackmail! You come here behind my back, knowing that I… knowing that the Chief must have a Washington paper, and tricked that nigger into selling-”
“I didn’t trick him. And is he really a nigger? The subject is very delicate here. It is like the Knights of Malta. You know, how many family quarterings can you produce? Anyway, if you’re interested, there is a very engaging Negro newspaper here called the Washington Bee. Since niggers and-by association?-blackmail so much concern you, you should talk to the proprietor, a Mr. Chase. I can introduce you. He is, perhaps, too moral for Mr. Hearst, but he might sell, and then you-or Hearst-will have a true Washington paper, entirely black, like the town.”
Blaise looked less attractive as fury was replaced by anger, and a revival of his native cunning. “How can you pay all those bills on your desk…?”
“I didn’t know you could read upside down.”
“Red ink, yes.”
“I have my income, such as it is. I have,” she improvised, “helpful friends.”
“Cousin John? Well, he can’t help you, and John Hay doesn’t dare unless he wants the Journal down on him.”
“I don’t think he’s afraid of Mr. Hearst, or much of anyone. You see, he has,” she explained demurely, “a bad back.” Caroline rose. They faced one another at the room’s center. As they were the same height, blue eyes glared straight into hazel ones.