“Well, for reasons best known to themselves they happen just at present to be sore at Blake. There’s been a falling-out. He may have used them to do his dirty work in the past; and then, when this melon is ripe to cut, frozen both of them out of the picnic. I don’t care anything about their quarrels, or their motives either; I am after this story.
“Now, then, here’s your campaign: You take to-night off—I’ll tell the night city editor I’ve assigned you on a special detail—and you spend the evening reading up on these clippings, so you’ll have the background—the local colour for your story—all in your head. To-morrow morning at ten o’clock you go to the Wampum Club up on East Fiftieth Street and send your name in to Mr. Bogardus. He’ll be waiting there in a private room for you, and old Pratt will be with him. We’ll have to keep them under cover, of course, and protect them up to the limit, in exchange for the stuff they’re willing to give up to us. So you’re not to mention them as the sources of any part of your [318] information. Don’t name them in your story or to anybody on earth before or after we print it. Take all the notes you please while you’re with them, but keep your notes put away where nobody can see ’em, and tear ’em up as soon as you’re done with ’em. They’ll probably keep you there a couple of hours, because they’ve got a lot to tell, son; take it from me they have. Well, say they keep you three hours. That’ll give you time to get your lunch and catch the subway and be down town by two-thirty.
“At three o’clock to-morrow afternoon you go to the law offices of Myrowitz, Godfrey, Godfrey & Murtha in the Pyramid Building on Cedar Street. Ask to see Mr. Murtha. Send your name in to him; he’ll be expecting you. Murtha is in the firm now, but he gets out on the fifteenth—four days from now. There’s been a row there, too, I believe, and the other partners are shoving him out into the cold. He’s sore. Murtha ought to be able to tell the rest of what you’ll have to know in order to make our story absolutely libel proof. It may take some digging on your part, but he’ll come through if you only go at him the right way. In questioning him you can probably take your cues from what Bogardus and Pratt have already told you. That end of it, though, is up to you. Anyhow, by this time to-morrow night you ought to have your whole story lined up.”
“Do you want me to come back here then and [319] write it for the next morning?” asked Singlebury.
“I don’t want you to write it here at all,” said Mr. Foxman. “This thing is too big and means too much for us to be taking a chance on a leak anywhere. Have you got a quiet room to yourself where nobody can break in on you?”
“Yes, sir,” said Singlebury. “I’m living at the Godey Arms Hotel.”
“All right then,” said Mr. Foxman. “You rent a typewriter and have it sent up to your room to-morrow morning. When you are ready to start you get inside that room and sit down at that typewriter with the door locked behind you, and you stay there till you’ve finished your yarn. You ought to be able to do it in a day, by steady grinding. When you’re done tear up all your notes and burn the scraps. Then put your copy in a sealed envelope and bring it down here and deliver it to me, personally, here in this room—understand? If I’m busy with somebody else when you get here wait until I’m alone. And in the meantime, don’t tell the city editor or any member of the staff, or your closest friend, or your best girl—if you’ve got one—that you are working on this story. You’ve not only got to get it but you’ve got to keep your mouth shut while you’re getting it and after you’ve got it—got to keep mum until we print it. There’ll be time enough for you to claim credit when the beat is on the street.”
[320]
“I understand, sir,” said Singlebury. “And I’m certainly mighty grateful to you, Mr. Foxman, for this chance.”
“Never mind that,” said Mr. Foxman. “I’m not picking you for this job because I like the colour of your hair, or because I’m taken by the cut of your clothes. I’m picking you because I think you can swing it. Now, then, go to it!”
Singlebury went to it. With all his reporter’s heart and all his reporter’s soul and, most of all, with all his reporter’s nose he went to it. Tucked away in a corner of the evening edition’s art room, deserted now and dark except for the circle of radiance where he sat beneath an electric bulb, he read and reread the scissorings entrusted to him by Mr. Foxman, until his mind was saturated with the subject, holding in solution a mass of information pertaining to the past activities of the Pearl Street trolley line and of John W. Blake, freebooter of big business; and of Ezra Pratt, class leader and financier; and of S. P. Bogardus, statesman and legislative agent.