Frank and Harrigan went out and The Skipper, rushing to the door, began yelling into the room beyond.
“Hey, you Shorty and Tom, I’ve got that last lead.”
Coming back to his desk he began writing again, grinning as he worked. To Sam he handed the typewritten sheet prepared by Frank.
“Dastardly attempt to win the cause of the working girls by dirty scab leaders and butter-fingered capitalist class,” it began, and after this followed a wild jumble of words, words without meaning, sentences without point in which Sam was called a mealy-mouthed mail-order musser and The Skipper was mentioned incidentally as a pusillanimous ink slinger.
“I’ll run the stuff and comment on it,” declared The Skipper, handing Sam what he had written. It was an editorial inviting the public to read the article prepared for publication by the strike leaders and sympathising with the striking girls that their cause had to be lost because of the incompetence and lack of intelligence of their leaders.
“Hurrah for Roughhouse, the brave man who leads working girls to defeat in order that he may retain leadership and drive intelligent effort out of the cause of labour,” wrote The Skipper.
Sam looked at the sheets and out of the window where a snow storm raged. It seemed to him that a crime was being done and he was sick and disgusted at his own inability to stop it. The Skipper lighted a short black pipe and took his cap from a nail on the wall.
“I’m the smoothest little newspaper thing in town and some financier as well,” he declared. “Let’s go have a drink.”
After the drink Sam walked through the town toward the country. At the edge of town where the houses became scattered and the road started to drop away into a deep valley some one helloed behind him. Turning, he saw the soft-eyed Jewish girl running along a path beside the road.
“Where are you going?” he asked, stopping to lean against a board fence, the snow falling upon his face.