"Get me a full report of the facts."
"What are you going to do?" asked Shearson.
"Print them."
"Oh, my Lord!" groaned Shearson.
The circle was now drawing in and the talk became brisker, more detailed, more intimate. To his overwhelming amazement Hal learned some of the major facts of that subterranean journalistic history which never gets into print; the ugly story of the blackmail of a President of the United States by a patent medicine concern (Dr. Surtaine verified this with a nod); the inside facts of the failure of an important senatorial investigation which came to nothing because of the drunken debauchery of the chief senatorial investigator; the dreadful details of the death of a leading merchant in a great Eastern city, which were so glossed over by the local press that few of his fellow citizens ever had an inkling of the truth; the obtainable and morally provable facts of the conspiracy on the part of a mighty financier which had plunged a nation into panic; these and many other strange narratives of the news, known to every old newspaper man, which made the neophyte's head whirl. Then, in a pause, a young voice said:
"Well, to bring the subject up to date, what about the deaths in the Rookeries?"
"Shut up," said Wayne sharply.
There followed a general murmur of question and answer. "What about the Rookeries?"—"Don't know."—"They say the death-rate is a terror."—"Are they concealing it at the City Hall?"—"No; Merritt can't find out."—"Bet Tip O'Farrell can."—"Oh, he's in on the game."—"Just another fake, I guess."
In vain Hal strove to catch a clue from the confused voices. He had made a note of it for future inquiry, when some one called out: "Mac Ellis hasn't said anything yet." The others caught it up. "Speech from Mac!"—"Don't let him out."—"If you can't speak, sing a song."—"Play a tune on the bazoo."—"Hike him up there, somebody."—"Silence for the MacGuire!!"
"I've never made a speech in my life," said Ellis, glowering about him, "and you fellows know it. But last night I read this in Plutarch: 'Themistocles said that he certainly could not make use of any stringed instrument; could only, were a small and obscure city put into his hands, make it great and glorious.'"