“Andy, was the story so rotten?”
“I just told you it was a crackajack piece of work.”
“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about my doing it at all.”
“It was your assignment, was n’t it?”
“Certainly, it was,” assented Jeremy, comforted and justified. “I had to take it or quit my job, did n’t I?”
“Oh, I guess you’re stronger than that on The Record.”
“What would you have done in my place?”
“Me? Oh, I’m a reporter. I reckon I’d have done the story.” But there was no conviction in Galpin’s tone. Jeremy wished he could have seen the bandaged eyes. He mistrusted that they would have avoided his.
“That’s part of the business,” he declared, self-defensively.
“That’s the hell of the business,” said Andrew Galpin. Jeremy left the hospital feeling that Marcia Ames and Andrew Galpin had said much the same thing to him about his article, in widely different terms.