"I ought to shoot you for this, and I will unless you swear that you will never print a word of what I've said, never breathe a word of it to a soul. Promise, or by—"
Hallard smiled and raised his half-eyebrow.
"You're a little excited, Captain, aren't you? You're kind of forgetting that shooting a reporter would be about the poorest way of escaping publicity ever imagined. People would naturally ask what it was you were so anxious to conceal, eh?"
Forbes turned away helpless.
Hallard anticipated his next desperate idea. "I'm much obliged to you, Captain, for not offering me a ten-dollar bill or a new suit of clothes. They usually begin with that. But it rarely works, Captain. We're a shiftless lot, some of us, but we've got our ideas of duty, too."
"Duty to what?" Forbes sneered. "Duty to act as grave-robbers and expose the sorrows of the world to the laughter of the public? To drag families down to ruin?"
"Duty to throw the light into dark places, Captain; duty to make it hard to conceal things the public ought to know; duty to keep digging up the truth and throwing it into the air."
"Truth!" Forbes raged. "What have you got to do with the truth? Would you know it if you saw it? Would you use it if you had it?"
"You bet I would," Hallard said. "If you'll tell me the exact truth, as far as you know it, about the suicide—or murder, as you call it—of one of the most beautiful members of one of the most prominent families—I'll publish it."
"In your own way, yes."