He walked to the door and opened it part way. Witherbee, wondering and apprehensive, followed him and looked over the old judge's shoulder into the anteroom.
For J. Hayden Witherbee, one quick glance was enough. Four—no, five—five alert-looking young men, all plainly marked with the signs of a craft abhorrent to Mr. Witherbee, sat in a row of chairs beyond a railing; and beyond them was a sixth person, a young woman with a tiptilted nose and a pair of inquisitive, expectant gray eyes. Mr. Witherbee would have known them anywhere by their backs—jackals of the press, muckrakers, sworn enemies to Mr. Witherbee and all his kith and kind!
It was Mr. Witherbee who slammed the door shut, drawing Judge Priest back into the shelter of the closed room; and it was Mr. Witherbee who made inquiry, tremulously, almost humbly:
“What does this mean? What are these people doing there? What game is this?” He sputtered out the words, one question overlapping the next.
“Son,” said Judge Priest, “you seem flustered. Ca'm yourself. This is no game as I know of. These are merely friends of mine—representatives of the daily press of your city.”
“But how did they come to be here?”
“Oh!” said the judge. “Why, I tele-phoned 'em. I telephoned 'em that I was comin' down here on a matter of business, and that maybe there might be a sort of an item for them if they'd come too. I've been makin' what they call copy for them, and we're all mighty sociable and friendly; and so they came right along. To tell you the truth, we all arrived practically together. You see, if I was sort of shoved out of here against my will and maybe mussed up a little those boys and that there young lady there—her name Is Miss Margaret Movine—they'd be sure to put pieces in their papers about it; and if it should come out incidentally that the cause of the row was a certain gasworks transaction, in a certain town down in Kentucky, they'd probably print that too. Why, those young fellows would print anything almost if I wanted them to. You'd be surprised!
“Yes, suh, you'd be surprised to see how much they'd print for me,” he went on, tapping J. Hayden Witherbee upon his agitated chest with a blunt forefinger. “I'll bet you they'd go into the full details.”
As Mr. Witherbee listened, Mr. Witherbee perspired freely. At this very moment there were certain transactions pending throughout the country—he had a telegram in his desk now from Betts, sent from a small town in Alabama—and newspaper publicity of an unpleasant and intimate nature might be fatal in the extreme. Mr. Witherbee had a mind trained to act quickly.
“Wait a minute!” he said, mopping his brow and wetting his lips, they being the only dry things about him. “Wait a minute, please. If we could settle this—this matter—just between ourselves, quietly—and peaceably—-there wouldn't be anything to print—would there?”