"Haven't you seen the afternoon papers?"
"No."
"Well! Read 'em!" Mr. Wells spread his papers out before Paul, whose astonished eyes took in for a second time the story of the Wilkes suicide. But what a story!
He read his own name in big, black type; he read head-lines that told of a starving boy sent out on a hopeless assignment as a cruel joke; he read the story as it had really occurred, only told in the third person by an author who was neither ashamed nor afraid to give credit where it was due. The egotistical pretense of The Buffalo Intelligencer was torn to shreds, and ridicule was heaped upon its editor. Paul read nervously, breathlessly, until Wells interrupted him.
"I'm to blame for this," said he. "I couldn't stand for such a crooked deal. When I got in this morning and saw what that fat imbecile had done to you I tipped the true facts off to the others—all of the facts I knew. They got the rest from Corrigan, down at the Grand Trunk depot. Of course this means my job, if the old man finds it out; but I don't give a damn."
As yet Anderson was too dazed to grasp what had happened to him, but the other continued:
"The boys have had it in for Burns, on the quiet, for months, and now
I guess they're even."
"I—I don't know how to thank you," stammered Anderson.
"Don't try. You're a born reporter, and the other papers will give you a job even if the baby hippo in yonder fires you."
A boy touched Paul on the arm with the announcement, "Mr. Burns wants to see you."