Kenneth Carr, Wratten, Mainham and Humphrey went into the dining-car, as the express rocked northwards towards Luton. The journey was full of apprehension for Humphrey; he had never been on such a big story as this, and, though he knew he had to do nothing but obey Wratten, there was still a doubt of success in his mind. It interfered with his appetite. He marvelled that the other men could eat their food so calmly, as though they were going on a pleasure trip, and talk of ordinary things. Of course, they were thoroughly used to it. It was as common an incident in their lives as casting up columns of figures is to a bank clerk, or the measuring of dead bodies to an undertaker.
After luncheon, Mainham left them to go back to the carriage, and the three friends were alone over cigarettes and coffee.
"I'm sorry I lost my temper with Gully," Carr said, after a pause.
"Oh, we all know Gully." Wratten smiled and sipped his coffee.
"Don't get like Gully," Kenneth said to Humphrey, "even if you feel like him. It's bad; it's the Gullys that have brought such a lot of disrespect on journalism. He's the type of journalist whom people think it necessary to give 'free' cigars to, and 'free' whiskies and sodas; 'free' dinners, even. They think it is the correct thing to give 'free' things to us, as one throws bones to a dog. It's the Gullys who take everything greedily and never disillusion them."
"But don't you think you're too sensitive?" Humphrey ventured. "It seems to me that the work we do demands a skin thick enough to take all insults. Look at the things we have to do sometimes!"
"It's our business to take risks," Wratten interposed. "I don't mind what I do, so long as there's a good story in it. If it's discreditable, the fault isn't with me. I'm only a humble instrument. It's The Day who's to blame—The Day and the system. I do my duty, and any complaints can be made to Neckinger or Ferrol, with or without horsewhip. That's my position."
"You see," Kenneth Carr said, musingly, "there are, roughly, three classes of reporters. There's the man who is keenly alive to the human side of his work and talks about it, as I'm afraid I do; there's the man who feels just as keenly and shuts up, as you and Wratten and Mainham and hosts of others do; and there's the chap, like Gully, who hasn't an ounce of imagination, and gloats over things like this mine disaster, because he's a ghoul. I envy people like you and Wratten. You do the best work because, although you feel pity and sorrow, you never allow these feelings to hamper your instincts of the reporter."
Humphrey smiled. "Wratten doesn't." The time passed in recounting some of Wratten's audacious doings. His bullying a half-suspected murderer into a confession; his brutal exposure of a woman swindler—he had answered an advertisement for a partner in some scheme or other, found the advertiser was a woman with a questionable commercial past, pretended he was bona fide, and, when he had obtained all his material, ruthlessly exposed her in The Day. There was the case of the feeble-minded millionaire, who was kept a prisoner in his house. There was the case of the Gaiety girl who married a lordling, and Wratten pried into their private lives, forced the lordling into an interview, and wrote a merciless story that made London snigger. He was absolutely callous in his work, yet so human and tender-hearted out of it. Humphrey, since that night when he had been helped by him, had looked up to Wratten as the type of the ideal reporter, with courage unlimited, who never flinched, even when the work was most unsavoury and humiliating.