The door opened, and Sergeant O'Leary entered.
"The coroner, sorr—him an' a reporter from each av the mornin' papers."
"Show the coroner in first," ordered Carroll. "Let the newspapermen wait."
"Yis, sorr. They seem a bit impatient, sorr. They say they're holdin' up the city edition for the news, sorr."
"Very good. Tell them Chief Leverage says the story is worth waiting for."
The coroner—a short, thick-set man—entered and heard the story from
Leverage's lips. He made a cursory examination and nodded to Carroll.
"Inquest in the morning, Mr. Carroll. Meanwhile, I reckon you want to let them newspapermen in."
The two reporters entered and listened popeyed to the story. They telephoned a bulletin to their offices, and were assured of an hour's leeway in phoning in the balance of the story. They were quivering with excitement over what promised to be, from a newspaper standpoint, the juiciest morsel of sensational copy with which the city had been blessed for some time.
To them Carroll recounted the story as he knew it, concealing nothing.
"This is a great space-eating story," he told them in their own language—the jargon of the fourth estate—"and the more it eats the better it'll be for me. We want publicity on this case—all you can hand out big chunks of it. We want to know who that woman was. The way I figure it, this city is going to get a jolt at breakfast. Every one is going to be comparing notes. Out of that mass of gossip we may get some valuable information. Get that?"