CHAPTER IX
So far as Jones was concerned, he was rather pleased with the turn of affairs. This was no time for love-making; no time for silly, innocuous quarrels and bickerings, in which love must indulge or die. Florence no longer rode horseback, and Norton returned to his accustomed haunts, where no one made the slightest attempt upon his life. In his present state of mind he would have welcomed it.
"What's the matter with Jim?" asked the night city editor, raising his eye shade.
"I don't know," answered the copy reader.
"Goes around as if he'd been eating dope; bumped into the boss a while ago and never stopped to apologize."
"Perhaps he's mapping out the front page for that Hargreave stuff," laughed the copy reader. "Between you and me and the gate post, I don't believe there ever was a man by the name of Hargreave."
"Oh, there was a chap by that name, all right. He's dead. A man can't swim three hundred miles in rough water, life-buoy or no. They ought to have funeral services, and let it go at that."
"But what was the reason for that fake cable from Gibraltar saying that Orts was alive? I don't see any sense in that."
"The man who pulled it off did. I think, for my part, that both Orts and Hargreave are dead, and that the man picked up by the tramp steamer Orient was riding some other balloon."
"You're wrong there. The description of it proved that it was Orts' machine. Oh, Jim probably has got a man's-size yarn up his sleeve, but he's a long time in delivering the goods. He's beginning to mope a good deal. Woman back of it somewhere. Haven't held down this copy job for twelve years without being able to make some tolerable guesses. Jim's a star man. When he gets started nothing can stop him. He covered the Chinese Boxer rebellion better than any other correspondent there. I wonder how old he is?"