Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/44

This page needs to be proofread.

The Stolen Story

to send out on one of these stories. Most of the men were still scattered about over the town and adjacent country on assignments; those in the office were all, except one of the new reporters, busily writing, with coats off and the incandescent lights gleaming on shirt-sleeves and copy paper.

Just then a man entered the room in a hurry. Stone turned to the assistant night city editor. "Haskill," he said, "who's that sitting down in Woods's old place?" One cannot have the best eyesight and the best copy-reading ability in town at the same time.

"Why, it's Billy himself," said Haskill.

"I thought so," said Stone; "what's he doing here?"

"Lord knows," said Haskill, running his pencil through a half page of some poor space-grabber's copy. "Guess he's going to write a note to leave for someone."

Stone called up Linton, the cub, handed him the Head-quarters report, said, "Hurry," and bent over the Senator Platt interview he was "reading" for the first page.

It was not good Park Row form for a

26