The photo-engraver’s face darkened. “See here, young feller, don’t you be calling names. I don’t hand out negatives to any Tom, Dick, or Harry; but if the boss’ niece comes up here, and says that she’s been sent for the pictures, you don’t suppose I’m going to put her through a cross-examination before I give ’em to her, do you? What’s this all mean, anyway? I don’t understand it at all.”
Gale didn’t stop to enlighten him. Muttering something under his breath, he turned on his heel and hurried downstairs to his father’s office.
“Seen anything of Melba, governor?” he demanded.
“Not since breakfast time. Why do you ask?”
“Simply to hear myself talk, I guess,” said Gale, with an angry laugh. “I might have known that you hadn’t seen her. She took jolly good care, of course, to avoid being seen by either one of us.”
“Why, my son, what on earth is the matter?” exclaimed the proprietor of the Chronicle uneasily.
“The matter is that we’ve been stung—stung by that precious niece of yours. Those negatives are not upstairs.”
“Not upstairs?” echoed the elder Gale, with a look of blank bewilderment. “Then where are they?”
His son laughed grimly. “I guess they’re in the Bulletin’s photo-engraving room at this moment, being made into cuts for to-morrow morning’s paper. Melba has worked the same game on us that that kid worked on Carroll.[Pg 51]”