Comment other than a chuckle was superfluous from either one of them, and Jolter departed to the city editor’s room, to bring joy to the heart of the staff.
It was “Bugs” Roach who scented the far-reaching odor of this move with the greatest joy.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” he delightedly commented. “A grand jury investigation. Oh, listen to the band!”
Before noon the Merchants’ and the Planters’ and Traders’ Banks had withdrawn their advertisements.
At about the same hour a particularly atrocious murder was committed in one of the suburbs. Up in the reporters’ room of the police station, Thomas, of the Bulletin, and Graham, of the Chronicle, were indulging in a quiet game of whist with two of the morning newspaper boys, when a roundsman stepped to the door and called Graham out. Graham came back a moment later after his coat, with such studied nonchalance that the other boys, eternally suspicious as police reporters grow to be, looked at him narrowly, and Thomas asked him, also with studied nonchalance:
“The candy-store girl, or the one in the laundry office?”
“Business, young fellow, business,” returned Graham loftily. “I guess the Chronicle knows when it has a good man. I’m called into the office to save the paper. They’re sending a cub down to cover the afternoon. Don’t scoop him, old man.”
“Not unless I get a chance,” promised Thomas, but after Graham had gone he went down to the desk and, still unsatisfied, asked:
“Anything doing, Lieut.?”
“Dead as a door-nail,” replied the lieutenant, and Thomas, still with an instinct that something was wrong, still sensitive to a certain suppressed tingling excitement about the very atmosphere of the place, went slowly back to the reporters’ room, where he spent a worried half-hour.