All the papers offered sensational versions of Jack's story, more or less accurate. It had apparently been given out at Delamare's office in the first place, and so far they had it pretty straight. But they went on to embroider it. The more reckless sheets even printed interviews which caused Jack to grind his teeth, they made him out such a fool. One paper printed an alleged photograph, but it was a safely fuzzy photograph that might have been taken for almost anybody. They had discovered the address of his boarding-house, but in his absence his landlady, Mrs. Regan, had refused to be drawn out.
"Good old girl!" thought Jack.
The soberer sheets promised an interview in later editions.
"They're looking for me now!" thought Jack.
Being human, Jack could not but feel a pleasurable thrill, but his head was not quite turned. He glanced at the hurrying passers-by whimsically.
"They wouldn't rush by so fast if they knew this was he," he thought. But he had no intention of calling their attention to the fact. Silas Gyde's reference to the danger of too much publicity was present in his mind.
He turned into his own street keeping a wary eye ahead. Mrs. Regan's boarding house was three-quarters of the way down the block, one of a long row of dwellings with little grass plots in front and iron railings. Sure enough by the light of a street lamp Jack made out the figures of a group of men at her gate. As he came closer he saw that several of them carried cameras with flash light attachments.
His first impulse was to flee, but recollecting that they could not possibly know yet what he looked like, he walked boldly up to the group, and asked the New Yorker's stock question of a street crowd:
"Somepin the matter here?"
One replied: "This where Jack Norman lives. We're waitin' for him to come home."