“But considering your people are the instigators of lies, why don’t they send you down the complete list each day? It would save you the trouble.”
She laughed.
“Well, you see by the time a lie has passed through the mind of a man (or a woman for that matter) it has generally undergone certain modifications, and it is my work to get at the truth, which is, of course, a lie, in its original form.”
“I see. Then a pure lie is unadulterated truth?”
“Yes. And that is why a real lie is so hard to discover. It is essentially the truth.”
“But why are you so hard upon the newspapers? You do not leave one paragraph unstudied.”
“It is my work,” she asserted. “A lie that is allowed to circulate gains in bulk though it loses in truth.”
“What do you mean?” I inquired.
“Never ask me what I mean. I talk at random, and if it hits the mark, so much the better, and if not, well, it is none the worse.”
“Do you then read these papers purely from a business standpoint?”