“It is alleged,” continued the great man, disdaining to notice the interruption, “that in violation of popular rights he refuses to permit his accounts to be inspected by representatives of the press.”

“Under the law, you know, he is responsible to the directors of the cemetery company,” the reporter ventured to interject.

“They say,” pursued the editor, heedless, “that the inmates are in many cases badly lodged and insufficiently clad, and that in consequence they are usually cold.  It is asserted that they are never fed—­except to the worms.  Statements have been made to the effect that males and females are permitted to occupy the same quarters, to the incalculable detriment of public morality.  Many clandestine villainies are alleged of this fiend in human shape, and it is desirable that his underground methods be unearthed in the Malefactor.  If he resists we will drag his family skeleton from the privacy of his domestic closet.  There is money in it for the paper, fame for you—­are you ambitious, 216?”

“I am—­bitious.”

“Go, then,” cried the editor, rising and waving his hand imperiously—­“go and ’seek the bubble reputation’.”

“The bubble shall be sought,” the young man replied, and leaping into a man-hole in the floor, disappeared.  A moment later the editor, who after dismissing his subordinate, had stood motionless, as if lost in thought, sprang suddenly to the man-hole and shouted down it:  “Hello, 216?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” came up a faint and far reply.

“About that ’bubble reputation’—­you understand, I suppose, that the reputation which you are to seek is that of the other man.”

In the execution of his duty, in the hope of his employer’s approval, in the costume of his profession, Mr. Longbo Spittleworth, otherwise known as 216, has already occupied a place in the mind’s eye of the intelligent reader.  Alas for poor Mr. Inhumio!

A few days after these events that fearless, independent and enterprising guardian and guide of the public, the San Francisco Daily Malefactor, contained a whole-page article whose headlines are here presented with some necessary typographical mitigation: 

“Hell Upon Earth!  Corruption Rampant in the Management of the Sorrel
Hill Cemetery.  The Sacred City of the Dead in the Leprous Clutches of a
Demon in Human Form.  Fiendish Atrocities Committed in ‘God’s Acre.’  The
Holy Dead Thrown around Loose.  Fragments of Mothers.  Segregation of a
Beautiful Young Lady Who in Life Was the Light of a Happy Household.  A
Superintendent Who Is an Ex-Convict.  How He Murdered His Neighbor to
Start the Cemetery.  He Buries His Own Dead Elsewhere.  Extraordinary
Insolence to a Representative of the Public Press.  Little Eliza’s Last
Words:  ‘Mamma, Feed Me to the Pigs.’  A Moonshiner Who Runs an Illicit
Bone-Button Factory in One Corner of the Grounds.  Buried Head Downward.