“Then there’s no extra!”
He flung down his pencil and sprang up. “Nothing doing, Billy,” he called to Harper, who that instant opened the door; “go on back with you.” He began to walk up and down the little office, scowling, hands clenched in his trousers’ pockets. After a moment he stopped short, and looked at Katherine half savagely.
“I suppose you don’t know what it means to a newspaper man to have a big story laid in his hands and then suddenly jerked out?”
“I suppose it is something of a disappointment.”
“Disappointment!” The word came out half groan, half sneer. “Rot! If you were waiting in church and the bridegroom didn’t show up, if you were——oh, I can’t make you understand the feeling!”
He dropped back into his chair and scratched viciously at the copy paper with his heavy black pencil. She watched him in a sort of fascination, till he abruptly looked up. Suspicion glinted behind the heavy glasses.
“Are you sure, Miss West,” he asked slowly “that this whole affair isn’t just a little game?”
“What do you mean?”
“That your whole story is nothing but a hoax? Nothing but a trick to get out of a tight hole by calling another man a thief?”
Her eyes flashed.