“Won’t you sit down, Miss Baxter?” said Mr. Hardwick, with no trace of that anger in his voice which she had expected. “I have been waiting for you. You said you would be here at five, and I like punctuality. Without beating round the bush, I suppose I may take it for granted that the Evening Graphite is indebted to you for what it is pleased to call the Board of Public Construction scandal?”
“Yes,” said the young woman, seating herself; “I came up to tell you that I procured for the Graphite that interesting bit of information.”
“So I supposed. My colleague, Henry Alder, saw Hazel this afternoon at the offices of the Board. The good man Hazel is panic-stricken at the explosion he has caused, and is in a very nervous state of mind, more especially when he learned that his documents had gone to an unexpected quarter. Fortunately for him, the offices of the Board are thronged with journalists who want to get statements from this man or the other regarding the exposure, and so the visit of Alder to Hazel was not likely to be noticed or commented upon. Hazel gave a graphic description of the handsome young woman who had so cleverly wheedled the documents from him, and who paid him the exact sum agreed upon in the exact way that it was to have been paid. Alder had not seen you, and has not the slightest idea how the important news slipped through his fingers; but when he told me what had happened, I knew at once you were the goddess of the machine, therefore I have been waiting for you. May I be permitted to express the opinion that you didn’t play your cards at all well, Miss Baxter?”
“No? I think I played my cards very much better than you played yours, you know.”
“Oh, I am not instituting any comparison, and am not at all setting myself up as a model of strategy. I admit that, having the right cards in my hands, I played them exceedingly badly; but then, you understand, I thought I was sure of an exclusive bit of news.”
“No news is exclusive, Mr. Hardwick, until it is printed, and out in the streets, and the other papers haven’t got it.”
“That is very true, and has all the conciseness of an adage. I would like to ask, Miss Baxter, how much the Graphite paid you for that article over and above the fifty pounds you gave to Hazel?”
“Oh! it wasn’t a question of money with me; the subject hasn’t even been discussed. Mr. Stoneham is not a generous paymaster, and that is why I desire to get on a paper which does not count the cost too closely. What I wished to do was to convince you that I would be a valuable addition to the Bugle staff; for you seemed to be of opinion that the staff was already sufficient and complete.”
“Oh, my staff is not to blame in this matter; I alone am to blame in being too sure of my ground, and not realizing the danger of delay in such a case. But if you had brought the document to me, you would have found me by far your best customer. You would have convinced me quite as effectually as you have done now that you are a very alert young woman, and I certainly would have been willing to give you four or five times as much as the Graphite will be able to pay.”
“To tell the truth, I thought of that as I stood here yesterday, but I saw you were a very difficult man to deal with or to convince, and I dared not take the risk of letting you know I had the news. You might very easily have called in Mr. Alder, told him that Hazel had given up the documents, and sent him flying to Brixton, where very likely the clerk has a duplicate set. It would have been too late to get the sensation into any other morning paper, and, even if it were not too late, you would have had something about the sensation in the Bugle, and so the victory would not have been as complete as it is now. No, I could not take such a risk. I thought it all out very carefully.”