"I'll go tell him right away," said Mickey.
Douglas was walking the floor as Mickey entered.
"You delivered the letter?" he cried.
Mickey shook his head, producing the envelope.
"You didn't!" shouted Bruce. "You didn't! Thank God! Oh, thank God you didn't!"
"Aw-w-ah!" protested Mickey.
"Why didn't you?" demanded Douglas.
"Well you see," said Mickey, "me and Mr. Chaffner of the Herald were talking a while ago about some poetry I'm going to write for his first page, soon now—I've always sold his papers you know, so I sort of belong—and I happened to tell him I was working for you, and how fine you were, and about your being engaged to Miss Leslie, and he seemed to kind of think you was heading for trouble; he just plain said so. I was so scared I begged him not to let that happen. I told him how everything was, and finally I got him to promise that if you did get into trouble he'd help you, at least he almost promised. You see he's been a newspaper man so long, he eats it, and sleeps it, and he had a s'scoop'—"
"'He had a scoop?'" repeated Douglas.
"Yes! A great one! Biggest one in ten years!" said the boy. "He loved it so, that me trying to pry him loose from it was about like working to move the Iriquois Building with a handspike. All he'd promise that first trip was that if I'd come and tell him when I saw you'd got into trouble, he'd see what he could do."