In the hastily constructed frame office out at the waterworks site, Ed Scales, pale and emaciated and with black rings under his eyes, looked up nervously as Bobby’s little army, reënforced from four to six by the addition of a “plain clothes man” and Dillingham, the Bulletin’s star reporter, invaded the place. Before a word was spoken, Feeney, the plain clothes man, presented Scales with a writ, which the latter attempted to read with unseeing eyes, his fingers trembling.
“What does this mean?”
“That I have come to take possession,” said Bobby, “with power to make an examination of every scrap of paper in the place. Frankly, Scales, we expect to find something crooked about the waterworks contract. If we do you know the result. If we do not, the interruption will be only temporary, and you will have very pretty grounds for action; for I am taking a long shot, and if I don’t find what I am after I have put myself and the mayor into a bad scrape.”
Scales thrice opened his mouth to speak, and thrice there came no sound from his lips. Then he laid a bunch of keys upon his desk, shoving them toward Feeney, and rose. He half-staggered into the large coat room behind him. He had scarcely more than disappeared when there was the startling roar of a shot, and the body of Scales, with a round hole in the temple, toppled, face downward, out of the door. It was Scales’ tragic confession of guilt. They sprang instantly to him, but nothing could be done for him. He was dead when they reached him.
“Poor devil,” said Ferris brokenly. “It is probably the first crooked thing he ever did in his life, and he hadn’t nerve enough to go through with it. I feel like a murderer for my share in the matter.”
Bobby, too, had turned sick; his senses swam and he felt numb and cold. He was aroused by a calm, dispassionate voice at the telephone. It was Dillingham, sending to the Bulletin a carefully lurid account of the tragedy, and of the probable causes leading up to it.
“We’ll have an extra on the street in five minutes,” he told Bobby with satisfaction as he rose. “That means that the Chronicle men will come out in a swarm, but it will take them a half-hour to get here. We have that much time, then, to dig up the evidence we are after, and if we hustle we can have a second extra out before the Chronicle can get a line. It’s the biggest beat in years. Come on, boys, let’s get busy,” and he took up the keys that Scales had left on the desk.
Dillingham had no sooner left the telephone than Feeney took up the receiver and called for a number. The reporter turned upon him like a flash, recognizing that call as the number of the coroner’s office. Dillingham suddenly caught himself before he had spoken, and looked hastily about the room. In the corner near the floor was a little box with the familiar bells upon it, and binding screws that held the wires. Quickly Dillingham slipped over to that corner just as Feeney was saying:
“Hello! Coroner’s office, this is Feeney. Is that you, Jack?… Well——”
At that instant Dillingham loosened a binding screw and slipped off the loop of the wire.