At about the same moment, in a tiny room four miles away, an elderly, melancholy man sat bowed over a telegraph board and drowsily plied his keys. He was the Gazette's special operator, and, having his orders from Mr. Parker, who looked after the news bureau when Hammerton was away, he was methodically going through his list like this:
Tribune, PITTSBURG:
Ferris Stanhope or Laurence Varney? Baffling mystery surrounding prominent men, one of whom now hiding here. Probable scandal, one thousand words.
Press, CINCINNATI:
Ferris Stanhope or Laurence Varney? Baffling mystery—
CHAPTER XIII
VARNEY MEETS HIS ENEMY AND IS DISARMED
Varney crossed the square in the gathering dusk and went slowly up Main Street, looking about him as he walked. He had wrenched his ankle slightly in one of his falls upon the Cypriani's deck, and the four-mile walk over the ruts of the River road to the town had done it no good. Worse yet, it had made the trip down from the yacht laboriously slow, and he was harried with the fear that the irreparable damage might already have been done.
If it had not, if no reporter had yet gone to the Carstairs house, his one possible hope of escape stood before him like a palm-tree in a plain. Stiffened and strengthened by all his difficulties, his resolve to win throbbed and mounted within him; but he faced the knowledge that the odds now were heavily against him. On the long chance, he had played a desperate game, had come within an ace of winning, and had lost. His great secret which, beyond any other purpose, he had meant to guard to the end, was glaringly out. Now it was the iron heart of his will that it should go no further. Talkative young Hammerton had given him the hint how that might be accomplished; and if the method was extreme, it would be sure. Whatever the cost, it would be a small price to pay for keeping his name, and Uncle Elbert's, out of ruinous headlines in to-morrow's papers.
Two blocks further on he came opposite a neat, three-story brick building, across the width of which was a black and gold signboard, lettered THE GAZETTE. Below it was the large plate-glass window of a counting-room, now dark. On the left was a lighted doorway, leading upstairs.