The other nodded.  “Did you get any newspapers by the train?” she inquired.

“Yes; there was a mail in.  I had a letter, too,” he added after a little hesitation, due to the fact that he had intended telling Miss Welland about that letter first.  Thus do confidences, once begun, inspire even the self-contained to further confidences.

“You know there was a reporter up from Angelica City writing up the wreck.”

“Yes.”

“Gardner, his name is.  A nice sort of fellow.  I showed him some nonsense that I wrote about the wreck.”

“You?  What kind of nonsense?”

“Oh, just how it struck me, and the queer things people said and did.  He took it with him.  Said it might give him some ideas.”

“One might suppose it would.  Did it?”

“Why, he didn’t use it.  Not that way.  He sent it to the New York Sphere for what he calls a ‘Sunday special,’ and what do you think!  They accepted it.  He had a wire.”

“As Gardner’s?”

“Oh, no.  As the impressions of an eye-witness.  What’s more, they’ll pay for it and he’s to send me the check.”

“Then, in spite of a casual way of handling other people’s ideas, Mr. Gardner apparently means to be honest.”

“It’s more than square of him.  I gave him the stuff to use as he wanted to.  He could just as well have collected for it.  Probably he touched it up, anyway.”

“The Goths and Vandals usually did ‘touch up’ whatever they acquired, I believe.  Hasn’t he sent you a copy?”

“He’s going to send it.  Or bring it.”

“Bring it?  What should attract him to Manzanita again?”

“Something mysterious.  He says that there’s a big sensational story following on the wreck that he’s got a clue to; a tip, he calls it.”

“That’s strange.  Where did this tip come from?  Did he say?”

Miss Van Arsdale frowned.

“New York, I think.  He spoke of its being a special job for The Sphere.”

“Are you going to help him?”

“If I can.  He’s been white to me.”

“But this isn’t white, if it’s what I suspect.  It’s yellow.  One of their yellow sensations.  The Sphere goes in for that sort of thing.”

Miss Van Arsdale became silent and thoughtful.

“Of course, if it’s something to do with the railroad I’d have to be careful.  I can’t give away the company’s affairs.”

“I don’t think it is.”  Miss Van Arsdale’s troubled eyes strayed toward the inner room.

Following them, Banneker’s lighted up with a flash of astonished comprehension.

“You don’t think—­” he began.

His friend nodded assent.

“Why should the newspapers be after her?”

“She is associated with a set that is always in the lime-light,” explained Miss Van Arsdale, lowering her voice to a cautious pitch.  “It makes its own lime-light.  Anything that they do is material for the papers.”