“There was a little talk last year. You mean the big mission funds he has raised?”
Peter nodded. His eyes were overbright now. “Nobody has the evidence, Mann. It isn't news as it stands.”
“Suppose you could make it news—big news.”
“Oh, of course—” the journalist gestured with his cigarette.
“Well, you can. To-night. Go straight to his house—over in Stuyvesant Square, not five minutes in a taxi, not ten on the cars—and ask him point-blank to consent to an accounting. Just ask him.” Sumner Smith mused. “It might be worth trying,” he said.
“Take my word for it.”
The journalist paid his check, rose, nodded to an acquaintance across the room, said: “I'll think it over, Mann. Much obliged—” and sauntered out.
This was unsatisfactory. Peter, crestfallen, forgot that Sumner Smith was hardened to sensations. And peering gloomily after the great reporter, he only half saw the man pause at the small desk near the bar, then speak casually to the now somewhat wobbly Hy Lowe: he only half heard a taxi pull up outside, a door slamming, the sudden grinding of gears as the taxi darted away. There were so many noises outside: you hardly noticed one more.
The waiter brought his dinner. He bolted it with unsteady hands. “I must think this all out,” he told himself. “If Sumner Smith won't do it, one of the other Earth men will. Or some one on The Morning Continental.”
He lit a cigar, sat bark and gazed out at the dim street where dimmer figures and vehicles moved forever by. It occurred to him that thus would a man sit and smoke and meditate who was moved by an overmastering love to enact a tremendous deed. But it was difficult to sustain the pose with his temples throbbing madly and a lump in his throat. His heart, too, was skipping beats, he thought. Surreptitiously he felt his left wrist.