Again Sterne and Ellis glanced at each other, but with a different expression this time. The look meant that they had recognized in the intruder a flash of that mysterious sense vaguely known as "the newspaper instinct," with which a few are born, but which most men acquire by giving mortgages on the blest illusions of youth.
"Cor-rect," said Ellis.
"Let the retraction rest for the present. I'll decide it later."
The door was pushed open, and a dark man of perhaps thirty, with a begrimed and handsome face, entered. In one hand he held a proof.
"About this paragraph," he said to Sterne in a slightly foreign accent. "Is it to run to-morrow?"
"What paragraph is that?"
"The one-stick editorial guying Dr. Surtaine."
"Kill it," said Sterne hastily. "This is Mr. Harrington Surtaine. Mr. Surtaine, this is Max Veltman, foreman of our composing-room."
Slowly the printer turned his fine, serious face from one to the other. "Ah," he said presently. "So it is arranged. We do not print this paragraph. Good!"
Impossible to take offense at the tone. Yet the smile which accompanied it was so plainly a sneer that Hal's color rose.