“Well, I’m no Socialist,” said the political reporter, “but I’m a newspaper man, and I say it’s news when a Socialist does a thing just as much as when any one else does it.  Yet if I tried to print it, they’d give me the laugh on the copy-desk.”

“It’s a fact that we’re all tied down on the news in this town,” corroborated Wayne; “what between the Chamber of Commerce and the Dry Goods Union and the theaters and the other steady advertisers.  You must have noticed, Mr. Surtaine, that if there’s a shoplifting case or anything of that kind you never see the name of the store in print.  It’s always ‘A State Street Department Store’ or ‘A Warburton Avenue Shop.’  Ask Ellis if that isn’t so.”

“Correct,” said Ellis.

“Why shouldn’t it be so?” cried Shearson.  “You fellows make me tired.  You’re always thinking of the news and never of the advertising.  Who is it pays your salaries, do you think?  The men who advertise in the ‘Clarion.’”

“Hear!  Hear!” from Dr. Surtaine.

“And what earthly good does it do to print stuff like those shoplifting cases?  Where’s the harm in protecting the store?”

“I’ll tell you where,” said Ellis.  “That McBurney girl case.  They got the wrong girl, and, to cover themselves, they tried to railroad her.  It was a clear case.  Every paper in town had the facts.  Yet they gave that girl the reputation of a thief and never printed a correction for fear of letting in the store for a damage suit.”

“Did the ‘Clarion’ do that?” asked Hal.

“Yes.”

“Get me a full report of the facts.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Shearson.

“Print them.”

“Oh, my Lord!” groaned Shearson.

The circle was now drawing in and the talk became brisker, more detailed, more intimate.  To his overwhelming amazement Hal learned some of the major facts of that subterranean journalistic history which never gets into print; the ugly story of the blackmail of a President of the United States by a patent medicine concern (Dr. Surtaine verified this with a nod); the inside facts of the failure of an important senatorial investigation which came to nothing because of the drunken debauchery of the chief senatorial investigator; the dreadful details of the death of a leading merchant in a great Eastern city, which were so glossed over by the local press that few of his fellow citizens ever had an inkling of the truth; the obtainable and morally provable facts of the conspiracy on the part of a mighty financier which had plunged a nation into panic; these and many other strange narratives of the news, known to every old newspaper man, which made the neophyte’s head whirl.  Then, in a pause, a young voice said: 

“Well, to bring the subject up to date, what about the deaths in the Rookeries?”

“Shut up,” said Wayne sharply.

There followed a general murmur of question and answer.  “What about the Rookeries?”—­“Don’t know.”—­“They say the death-rate is a terror.”—­“Are they concealing it at the City Hall?”—­“No; Merritt can’t find out.”—­“Bet Tip O’Farrell can.”—­“Oh, he’s in on the game.”—­“Just another fake, I guess.”