“And take a mortgage on your investment company?”

“Oh, ho, ho, that’s a good thing.  The other day one of your so-called literary men said that he would give me two dollars an hour to write for him from dictation.  ‘Ha, I’ve struck a soft thing,’ thinks I, and I goes to his den with him.  Well, when I had worked about half an hour, taking down his guff, he turns to me and says, ’Say, lend me a dollar.’  ‘I haven’t got but forty cents,’ I replied.  But he didn’t weaken.  ‘Well, let me have that,’ says he.  ’You’ve got job and I haven’t, you know.’  And he robbed me.  I’ve got to go out now and see a business jay from Peoria.  With my newspaper work and my side speculations I’m kept pretty busy.  Joe, where’s that fifty?”

“Gave it to you a moment ago.”

“All right.  Say, will you fellows be here when I come back?”

“Not if we can get out,” Whittlesy replied.

“Oh, you’ve bobbed up again, have you?  But remember that papa holds you in the hollow of his hand.”

CHAPTER XX.

CRIED A SENSATION.

In Chicago was a sheet—­it could not be called a newspaper and assuredly was not a publication—­that was rarely seen until late at night, and which always appeared to have been smuggled across the border-line of darkness into the light of the street lamps.  Ragged boys, carrying this sheet, hung about the theaters and cried a sensation when the play was done.  Their aim was to catch strangers, and to turn fiercely upon their importunity was not so effective as simply to say, “I live here.”

One night, as Henry and Ellen came out of a theater, they heard these ragged boys shouting the names of Witherspoon and Brooks.

“Gracious,” said Ellen, with sudden weight on Henry’s arm, “what does that mean?”

“It’s nothing but a fake,” he answered.

“But get a paper and see; won’t you?”

“Yes, as soon as I can.”

They were so crowd-pressed that it was some time before they could reach one of the boys; and when they did, Ellen snatched a paper and attempted to read it by the light of the carriage lamp.

“Wait until we get home,” he said.  “I tell you it amounts to nothing.”

“No, we will go to a restaurant,” she replied.

The sensation was a half column of frightening head on a few inches of smeared body.  It declared that recent developments pointed to the fact that Witherspoon and Brooks knew more concerning the whereabouts of Dave Kittymunks than either of them cared to tell.  It was known that old Colton’s extreme conservatism had been regarded as an obstruction, and that while they might not actually have figured in the murder, yet they were known to be pleased at the result, that the large reward was all a “bluff,” and that it was to their interest to aid the escape of Kittymunks.