“Wonder if he knows,” thought Jimmie. He was thinking of his night’s experience.
“John,” he said, after retracing his steps to the reporter’s desk, “you won’t put my name in the story?”
“It would make a peach of a story,” John laughed low. “Can’t you see it? Boy—candid-camera bug—shooting from the hip—gets picture of the Silent Terror.”
“Yes, but you won’t use it.” It was Tom Howe who suddenly broke in upon their talk. He had retraced his steps to discuss this very thing. “We can’t let him know we have his picture, not just yet,” he went on. “Might scare this Terror off. And we must get that man!”
“Oh! All right.” With a sigh the reporter crumpled a paper in his hand. “A word from the voice of the law is all that’s needed.”
“Wish there were more like you.” Tom put a hand on his shoulder. “Many a catch has been thwarted by a newspaper story released too soon. When we get that man you’ll have first chance at the story, you have my word for it.”
“Thanks, old man.” John slouched down over his desk to take up once more the task of answering phone calls about a saloon brawl, a pick-pocket in the park, and some young drunks who had rammed their car into a viaduct.
“Such,” he sighed, “is a reporter’s life.”
As for Jimmie, he was vastly relieved. “Let that story get into the paper,” he thought, “and let mother read it and my career as a ‘rising young newspaper man’ will be at an end.” His mother was “afraid for him.” That was her way of expressing it. Jimmie was fond of his mother but he did not like to have her be afraid.
Beside his father in a seat of the suburban train Jimmie glanced sidewise twice. Then he realized that his father knew all about the affair at the bridge. Someone had told him the whole story.