“Um,” said the scientist. “Before I went out on this last trip with Billy, I remarked that this other paper was giving a good bit of space to your road troubles in its news columns, and a good bit of its editorial space to criticisms of the Ford management. It occurred to me then that there might be a reason. How is the paper organized?”
“It is owned by one of our near-millionaires; a retired ranchman named Parker Higginson, who has dabbled in real-estate, in mines, and latterly in politics. His grouch against the railroad is purely personal. He has asked favors that I couldn’t legally grant; and on one occasion he took offence because I told him that a newspaper man should be the last person in the world to invite us to become law-breakers.”
“And his editor?” queried the expert.
“Is a bird of the same feather; a rather ‘yellow’ little fice named Healy.”
Sprague looked rather dubiously at the two cigars which the waiter was tendering on a server. “No, I think not, George,” he said, waving the cigars aside and feeling for his own pocket-case of stronger ones. And then to Maxwell: “This is all very nourishing. It may help out more than you suspect. Later in the evening I may ask you to call with me at the office of The Times-Record—though we may not have to go that far up the ladder to find what we are looking for. In the meantime, Tarbell is waiting for us out yonder in the lobby. Suppose we go and see what he wants.”
They found the young man, who looked like a younger brother to Starbuck, and who had made his record chasing cattle thieves in Montana, methodically rolling a cigarette in the loggia alcove, and Sprague began on him briskly.
“Spit it out, Archer; what have you found?”
“I didn’t make out to find what you sent me after,” was the half-evasive reply.
“All right; tell us what you did find.”
The young man dropped his cigarette and looked up with a glint of stubbornness in his stone-gray eyes.