The telephone bell rang again. This time the city editor listened.
“You’ve got the cashier locked up in your room!” he fairly yelled. “All right! All right!”
Shaking with excitement he wheeled from the telephone.
“Brail! Jack! Fredericks!”
He roared the names into the local room in sharp succession.
Like soldiers at a bugle call men sprang from desks where they were working or idling.
“You, Jack, get on the ’phone and take a story from Johnson! He’s got the biggest beat that ever was pulled off in the city of New York.”
The rewrite man settled himself at the wire.
At the other end of it Johnson, in his room at the cheap hotel where he lived, struggled to be calm in this moment of triumph. He began to dictate.
Near him, well within range of vision, sat his willing prisoner. Not once since they left the newspaper office together had the cashier been out of Johnson’s sight. Helpless, hopeless, but with a conscience no longer heavily burdened, the unfortunate man listened now just as he had listened while the reporter, without betraying his source of information, craftily verified by telephone the wandering confession.