"Scare-heads?" repeated the Irishman. "That's the very name for them. Scare-heads—delicious! This article, then, had scare-heads galore, and it described how a suicide had been identified. It seems some poor girl of the working-class had got into trouble, and sooner than bring disgrace on her family she had jumped into the river here—Hudson's River, isn't it? She had carefully arranged so that there was no clew by which she could be traced. But she had not counted on the devilish ingenuity of the special commissioner, a woman, too—at least I suppose it was a woman, since the thing was signed 'Polly Perkins.'"
Mrs. Jimmy saw the blood rise in the cheeks of Miss Peters, until the little Southern girl was as red as any of the maple-leaves that decked the cloth between the two women. She noticed that Rupert De Ruyter was staring into his plate with ill-concealed embarrassment, and that Mrs. Canton seemed a little uneasy.
"It seems that the poor creature's body was sent to the Morgue," Barry continued, "and no one claimed it, so it was buried at the cost of the county. And there's where the diabolical cunning of this reporter was exercised. She guessed that the girl's family would want to see the body laid away in holy ground, and so she went to the burying. And she hit it, for there were two women there in deep black, the mother of the poor wretch and the sister, not afraid to show their bitter grief when they thought they were unknown and unwatched. The spy tracked them to their house and she found out their names, and she put the whole story in the paper! I suppose it broke the mother's heart, and the sister's, to see the dead girl's shame brought home to her and to them when they thought it was buried in the grave with her body. I don't deny that the female detective showed a deal of skill; but what a pitiful thing! To risk breaking two loving hearts—and for what purpose?"
There was a moment's silence when the Irishman asked this unanswerable question. Then Miss Peters raised her head and looked him in the eye.
"That was what is called a 'beat.' No other paper had the news," she said; "and the reporter who wrote that story got a raise of five dollars a week."
"Faith, she deserved it," Barry returned. "It was blood-money she was taking, I'm thinking."
"That's what I think now," Miss Peters replied. "I wish I had thought so then. I wrote that article, and that is one reason why I am living down there among the poor, to try and make it up to them. Of course, I can't undo the wrong I did; but I mean to do my best."
Then there was another silence, broken by Mrs. Jimmy, who turned to Mrs. Canton and asked if she was going to take a box at the horse-show.
When the ladies left the dining-room Barry took the chair by the side of Suydam.
"What's the name of that pretty little girl?" he asked. "Peters, isn't it? I say, it was awfully plucky of her to tell us that she was 'Polly Perkins,' wasn't it, now? I like her; she's a trump! And that fair hair of hers is very fetching, isn't it?"