Carroll looked at him reproachfully. “I thought you knew me too well to ask such a superfluous question,” he said in a hurt tone. “Of course, I’ve been hammering at them just as hard as I know how, and intend to keep it up while there’s breath left in the Bulletin.
“But I’m afraid it’s a losing fight,” he went on sadly. “I don’t mind admitting to you, old man, that they’ve got me groggy. Without any advertising worth speaking of, and with my sources of news crippled, it looks as if the days of the Bulletin were numbered, and its finish already in sight.”
“How about your circulation?” the Camera Chap inquired. “Surely that must have gained? You don’t mean to say that the people haven’t supported you in this laudable fight?”
Carroll shrugged his shoulders. “Not so that you could notice it. It is true that at first my campaign against the grafters got us a lot of new readers. But the circulation figures soon dwindled. The population of Oldham seemed to lose interest in the fight. Besides, I was discredited at the start.”
“Discredited! How?” the Camera Chap demanded in astonishment.
The proprietor of the Bulletin smiled grimly. “There’s a rival sheet here—the Chronicle. It is the administration organ—which means, of course, that its proprietor is hand and glove with that gang of crooks at the city hall. The Chronicle happened to learn that I was formerly a reporter on the New York Sentinel, and that I was discharged from that paper for getting it into a libel suit. That information was pie to those crooks. The Chronicle published it on its front page in red type. It gave all the details of that unfortunate libel suit, insinuated that I had been forced to come to Oldham because no New York newspaper would hire me after my discharge from the Sentinel, and warned the public not to pay any attention to my ’base and slanderous attacks upon the virtuous and public-spirited gentlemen who were giving Oldham the best government it had ever enjoyed.’ Of course, this has hurt me a lot. The Chronicle keeps it[Pg 44] prominently displayed on its front page every day, and, as I have said, I am pretty much discredited.”
“That was a dirty trick,” declared Hawley indignantly. “Who is the proprietor of the Chronicle?”
“A lean old fox named Gale.”
“Gale!” the Camera Chap repeated, with an inflection of astonishment. “That’s a queer coincidence. Doesn’t happen to be any relative of the reporter by the same name on the staff of the New York Daily News, does he, Fred?”
Carroll grinned. “Yes, Hawley, the proprietor of the Oldham Chronicle is the father of your old enemy, Gale, of the News. I can assure you, he’s a chip of the young block, too—several chips, in fact.”