CHAPTER X
ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS
It was long after daylight when Jeff, heavy eyed and weary to the point of exhaustion, staggered out of the Erie terminal at New City and stumbled toward a trolley car that would take him home. He was happy though, in spite of his exhaustion. He had covered his first big story. He had gathered all the details and turned them into the office by means of the telephone, in such shape that Sullivan, the rewrite man had been able to grind out three columns of story. Indeed, as Jeff glanced at the headlines of the copy of the morning Freeman he had bought from the terminal news stand he realized that he had really covered two stories, for Sullivan in addition to writing the story of the wreck had written a second story on the rescue of the absconding Third National Bank paying teller, his subsequent death and the recovery of the one hundred thousand dollars in stolen bonds, which Jeff had turned in for safe keeping at the Treasurer’s office of the railroad and asked that they be put in the company’s safe until word of their return was passed on to Mr. Davidson, the president of the Third National, who would doubtless send a messenger to bring them safely back to the bank.
Jeff had only ambition enough to just glance at the first page of the Freeman as the trolley car carried him jerkily toward home and the bed he so much yearned for, and as a result it was not until hours later that he discovered how Sullivan, at the instigation of Boss Russell, had told all the details of the daring rescue of the dying Roderick Hammond; how a cub reporter of the Freeman staff, with the wreckers, had the courage to climb down into the perils of the mass of débris and carry out the unconscious man; how he identified him, and recovered the bonds, and how in spite of these achievements he had stayed on at the wreck all night long, sending in reports every half hour until all the editions had gone to press.
In truth, when Jeff woke up, considerably refreshed at three o’clock that afternoon, and then for the first time read the front page of the Freeman closely he was surprised and embarrassed to discover how much of a hero Sullivan had made him. His name seemed to appear in almost every paragraph of the story and before he had read half way through it he paused to mention to no one in particular that
“The blamed story seems to be more about me and my fool stunt than it does about Hammond and the bonds.”
But the real surprise of the whole situation occurred when Jeff read the last paragraph of the story. It seemed to hit him a little harder than all the rest and burn into his memory. It ran something like this:
“—and the dying man in almost his last breath told Thatcher that the ten $10,000 bonds were sewed in the lining of his coat, and that he wanted Thatcher to return them to the Third National Bank from which he had stolen them and claim whatever reward was due him.
“Enoch Davidson, president of the Third National, when informed by telephone from the Freeman office of the recovery of the bonds at an early hour this morning, announced that a reward of two thousand dollars had been offered for the return of the securities and this would go to the heroic young reporter of the Freeman staff just as soon as the bonds were back in the bank’s vault.”