“Well, after you’ve got it off your mind on paper you’ll probably feel better.”
“On paper?”
“Yes; you’ll report it for your office, won’t you?”
“Colton,” said the reporter earnestly, “if I sent in this story as I now see it, it would hit old Deacon Stilley on the telegraph desk. The Deacon would say: ‘Another good man gone wrong,’ and he’d take it over to Mr. Clare, the managing editor. Mr. Clare would read it and say: ‘Too bad, too bad!’ Then he’d work one of the many pulls that he’s always using for his friends and never for himself, and get board and lodging for one, for an indefinite period at reduced rates, in some first-class private sanitarium. The ‘one’ would be I. Let’s go inside.” For two hours Haynes talked with the men in the life-saving station. Then he and Professor Ravenden and Colton walked home in silence, broken only by the professor.
“I wish I could have captured that Lyccena” he said wistfully.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE SENATUS
ALL five of the men who composed the male populace of Third House gathered in Haynes’ room at ten o’clock that night. Everard Colton and old Johnston had been told briefly of the killing of Serdholm.
“Thus far,” said Haynes, addressing the meeting, “this vigilance committee has been a dismal failure. Had anyone told me that five intelligent men could fail in finding the murderer, with all the evidence at hand, I should have laughed at him.”
“Some features which might be regarded as unusual have presented themselves,” suggested Professor Ravenden mildly.
“Unusual? They’re absurd, insane, impossible! But there are the dead bodies, man and brute. We’ve got to explain them, or no one knows who may come next.”