“Do as you like,” Ellery answered. “Is that what you came down here to talk about?”
“No,” said Dick, changing his manner. “I came to talk up an editorial campaign. You don’t know my chum, Olaf Ericson, do you? He’s the biggest man on the force, and he’s a corker. I’ve learned more from him about bad smells than I did in two years of chemistry at New Haven. He knows this town from the seventh sub-cellar up, and ‘him and me is great friends’. Seriously, Norris, I’ve begun to get hold of just the facts I wanted about ‘the combine’, and it’s information that is so very definite and to the point that I believe I can make it hot for them. I want the public to be kept informed on everything that is to their discredit. Now the Star is a fairly clean paper, as papers go. I want help.”
“You’ll have to go up higher for that, my boy. It’s not for a freshman like myself to direct the policy of the paper. It would be a pretty serious matter to run up against those fellows. Mr. Lewis, the old man, is out, but when he comes back we’ll go and have a talk with him.”
“Talk to him! I should think so!” Dick exclaimed, and he began to pace the room and pour out the floods of his information, in wrath of soul and glow of spirits at his resolve to clean things up.
Meanwhile in Miss Huntress’ office, farther down the hall, Lena was discussing with that determined person the possibility of supplying the public with more of the kind of literature for which women, in particular, are supposed to have a mad desire. Miss Huntress was an adept at filling her page with personalities by which those who know nobody may have almost as great a knowledge of the great as those who have achieved the proud distinction of being “in it”. Lena had written a highly successful series of articles on “St. Etienne as seen from the shop windows,” and she longed for new and similar fields to conquer.
“I’ve been wondering,” said Miss Huntress, “if you couldn’t get up some catchy little things on private libraries and picture galleries. If you can raise some photographs to go with them, you might make quite a hit. That’s the kind of thing that takes. You see it makes people able to talk about the inside of rich folk’s houses.”
“I suppose you would want me to begin with Mr. Early,” said Lena, hardly knowing what reply to make.
“Never mind Mr. Early. Everybody knows just what he’s got and how his place looks. You might include him later, but I should start with people who are more exclusive and yet whose names everybody knows. Now there’s Mr. Windsor and Mrs. Percival. By the way, Mr. Norris is awfully intimate at the Percivals’. Perhaps he’d help you to an introduction. If Mrs. Percival would let you write up her library, you may be sure there’d be a lot of others who would follow her example. You might try it, anyway. Go and see her. Tell her what a hard time you are having to earn your own living. Your looks will carry you a long way.”
“I think young Mr. Percival is in Mr. Norris’ office now. Some one came in while I was there and I think he called him Percival,” said Lena faintly.
“Say! is that so?” exclaimed Miss Huntress. “Now’s your chance! Go in and ask while he’s there. He’ll find it hard to refuse to your face.”