“That suicide story has broken big and we’ve got a scoop.  Anderson has identified her.  Take the first G.T. train for Highland, Ontario, and find her father, Captain Wilkes.  Wire me a full story about the girl Mabel, private life, history, everything.  Take plenty of space.  Have it in by midnight.”

Wells’s eyes were round, too; they were glued upon Paul with a hypnotic stare, but he managed to answer, “Yes, sir!” He was no longer grinning.

“Now, Anderson,” the editor snapped, “get down-stairs and see if you can write the story.  Pile it on thick—­it’s a corker.”

“Very good, sir, but I’d like a little money,” that elated youth demanded, boldly.  “Just advance me fifty, will you?  Remember I’m on top salary.”

Burns made a wry face.  “I’ll send a check down to you,” he promised, “but get at that story and make it a good one or I’ll fire you tonight.”

Anderson got.  He found a desk and began to write feverishly.  A half-hour later he read what he had written and tore it up.  Another half-hour and he repeated the performance.  Three times he wrote the tale and destroyed it, then paused, realizing blankly that as a newspaper story it was impossible.  Every atom of interest surrounding the suicide of the girl grew out of his own efforts to solve the mystery.  Nothing had happened, no new clues had been uncovered, no one had been implicated in the girl’s death, there was no crime.  It was a tale of Paul Anderson’s deductions, nothing more, and it had no newspaper value.  He found he had written about himself instead of about the girl.

He began again, this time laboriously eliminating himself, and when he had finished his story it was perhaps the poorest journalistic effort ever written.

Upon lagging feet he bore the copy to Burns’s office.  But the editor gave him no time for explanation, demanding, fiercely: 

“Where’s that check I sent you?”

“Here it is.”  The youth handed it to him.  “Make a mistake?”

“I certainly did.”  Burns tore up the check before saying, “Now you get out, you bum, and stay out, or take the consequences.”

“Get out?  What for?”

“You know what for.”  Burns was quivering with rage.  “You ran a good bluff and you nearly put it over; but I don’t want to advertise myself as a jackass, so I shan’t have you pinched unless you come back.”

“Come back?  I intend to stay.  What’s the matter?”

“I had an idea you were fourflushing,” stormed the editor, “so I went down to the G.T. depot myself.  There’s no trunk of the sort there; Corrigan never saw you or anybody like you.  Say, why didn’t you walk out when you got that check?  What made you come back?”

Anderson began to laugh softly.  “Good old Corrigan!  He’s all right, isn’t he?  Well, he gets half of that check when you rewrite it, if I don’t laugh myself to death before I get to the bank.”

“What d’you mean?” Burns was impressed by the other’s confidence.