Quarter of an hour had passed when Dr. Surtaine, Esmé Elliot, her uncle—much surprised at finding her there—and Hal stood in the editorial office, hardly able yet to get their bearings.
"I shall give myself up to the authorities," decided Dr. Elliot. He was deadly pale, but of unshaken nerve.
"Why?" cried Hal. "It was no fault of yours."
"Rules of the game. Well, young man, you have a paper to get out for to-morrow, though the heavens fall. Good-night."
Hal gripped at his hand. "I don't know how to thank you—" he began.
"Don't try, then," was the gruff retort. "Where's Mac?"
He turned to McGuire Ellis's desk to bid that sturdy toiler good-night. There, dimly seen through the flickering candlelight, the undisputed Short-Distance Slumber Champion of the World sat, his head on his arms, in his familiar and favorite attitude of snatching a few moments' respite from a laborious existence.
"Will you look at that!" cried the physician in utmost amazement.
At the sight a wild surge of mirth overwhelmed Hal's hair-trigger nerves. He began to laugh, with strange, quick catchings of the breath: to laugh tumultuously, rackingly, unendurably.
"Stop it!" shouted Dr. Elliot, and smote him a sledge-blow between the shoulders.