With avid enthusiasm, Stuart plunged into a wild and woolly yarn which would have been looked upon with suspicion by the editor of a blood-and-thunder twenty-five-cent series.
The reporter cut him off abruptly.
"Kid," he said dryly, "the newspaper game is on the level. I don't say that you don't have to give a twist to a story, every once in a while, so that it'll be interesting, but it's got to be news.
"Get this into your skull if you're ever going to be a newspaper man: Every story you write has got to have happened, actually happened, to somebody, somewhere, at some place, at a certain time, for some reason. If it hasn't, it isn't a newspaper story. What's more, it must be either unusual or important, or it hasn't any value. Again, it must have happened recently, or it isn't news. And there's another rule. One big story is worth more than a lot of small ones.
"Now, look here. You've got a big story, a real news story, up your sleeve. It happened to you. It occurred at an unusual place. It has only just happened. It's of big importance. And the why seems to be a mystery. If you were a A Number One newspaper man, it would be your job to get on the trail of that story and run it down."
And then the reporter conceived the idea of playing on Stuart's sense of patriotism.
"That way," he went on, "it happens that there's no class of people that does more for its country than the newspaper men. They show up the crooks, and they can point out praise when public praise is due. They expose the grafters and help to elect the right man to office. They root out public evils and push reform measures through. They're Democracy, in type."
The words fanned the fire of Stuart's enthusiasm for a newspaper career.
"Yes," he said, excitedly, "yes, I can see that!"
"Take this story of yours—this plot that you speak about and are afraid to tell. You think it's planned against the United States'?"