Marchmont was an elderly man, of a journalistic type fast disappearing.  There is little room in the latter-day pressure of newspaper life for the man who works on “booze.”  But though a steady drinker, and occasionally an unsteady one, Marchmont had his value.  He was an expert in his specialty.  He had a wide acquaintance, and he seldom became unprofessionally drunk in working hours.  To offset the unwonted strain of rising before noon, however, he had fortified himself for this occasion by several cocktails which were manifest in his beaming smile and his expansive flourish in welcoming Mr. Surtaine to the goodly fellowship of the pen.

“Very good, all that about the facts behind the news,” he said genially.  “Very instructive and—­and illuminating.  But what I wanta ask you is this:  We fellows who have to write the facts behind the news; where do we get off?”

“I don’t understand you,” said Hal.

“Lemme explain.  Last week we had an accident on the Mid-and-Mud.  Engineer ran by his signals.  Rear end collision.  Seven people killed.  Coroner’s inquest put all the blame on the engineer.  Engineer wasn’t tending to his duty.  That’s news, isn’t it, Mr. Surtaine?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Yes:  but here’s the facts.  That engineer had been kept on duty forty-eight hours with only five hours off.  He was asleep when he ran past the block and killed those people.”

“Is he telling the truth, Mac?” asked Hal in a swift aside to Ellis.

“If he says so, it’s right,” replied Ellis.

“What do you call that?” pursued the speaker.

“Murder.  I call it murder.”  Max Veltman, who sat just beyond the speaker, half rose from his chair.  “The men who run the road ought to be tried for murder.”

“Oh, you can call it that, all right, in one of your Socialist meetings,” returned the reporter genially.  “But I can’t.”

“Why can’t you?” demanded Hal.

“The railroad people would shut down on news to the ‘Clarion.’  I couldn’t get a word out of them on anything.  What good’s a reporter who can’t get news?  You’d fire me in a week.”

“Can you prove the facts?”

“I can.”

“Write it for to-morrow’s paper.  I’ll see that you don’t lose your place.”

Marchmont sat down, blinking.  Again there was silence around the table, but this time it was electric, with the sense of flashes to come.  The slow drawl of Lindsay, the theater reporter, seemed anti-climatic as he spoke up, slouched deep in his seat.

“How much do you know of dramatic criticism in this town, Mr. Surtaine?”

“Nothing.”

“Maybe, then, you’ll be pained to learn that we’re a set of liars—­I might even go further—­myself among the number.  There hasn’t been honest dramatic criticism written in Worthington for years.”

“That is hard to believe, Mr. Lindsay.”