“I squared—all—accounts—dad—I squ’—”
He dropped back on the pillow. The surgeon bent his head to Slim’s breast, then slowly straightened up and drew the sheet over his face.
“Poor lad!” said Lanagan softly. “They will judge you differently there!”
Then again the newspaper mind curtly:
“Brady, you and Wilson stay here until I come back. Nobody gets in. Nobody, understand? Doc, we’ll have to impound you, too, until three. Understand, Brady?” Brady nodded.
“Now, Norrie,” snapped Lanagan incisively, “beat it, boy, beat it!”
For two hours Lanagan and I fed paper into our typewriters, with Sampson himself whisking the sheets away as they came from the platens. The M. E. even came in once or twice and tried to preserve his dignity while he scanned the copy hot from the typewriter.
The thrill of Lanagan’s great exclusive was throughout the entire plant. Not a half-dozen people in the office knew just what the story was, but each knew by the subtle instinct of communication that the big scoop of the year was shooting down the pneumatic to the composing room.
Not until we had the first papers, sticky and inky and fragrant, in our eager fingers, did we stir from our desks. Then followed the usual jubilation as the scouts ran in with the Times and the Herald with the “Watsons Confess” scareheads.
Ah, that is life, that exaltation of the “exclusive”!