“That’s what I wonder!” Boon returned with unwonted spirit. “We’ve been hunting you boys for two hours, almost lost the trains on the first two editions, waiting for you to give orders on the handling of this yarn. Why didn’t you tell us you were going to flop to Hammond? All we could do was to print the news.” “News, hell!” Quaid snorted. “Damned lies! Hammond never made a speech. Tried to; got hooted out.” Boon leaned close and got a good sample of the breath the quartet had acquired at the roadhouse, drawing erroneous but not unnatural conclusions as to their sobriety. “Say that again slow,” he requested. “I don’t get you.” Barney said it for him, making from two to four words grow where one grew before. “Now I say you ought to get out an extra denying this rot,” Barney wound up, looking about for confirmation. “Barney’s right,” declared the boss. “Now, listen,” Boon exclaimed. “I was glued to that radio horn from the time your dinner opened until the orchestra stopped playing ‘Home, Sweet Home.’ Don’t try to tell me I don’t know what I heard. Half the rest of the office heard it too. About twenty other people who listened in on the radio in Gobel’s drug store drilled in here to get the inside dope. The men over in the Press heard it too. They had me on the wire, asking for a statement from you.” “Now we all heard Hammond called on at the end of the evening. We heard him get a whale of a demonstration and some kidding. Then we heard his speech to the finish and the cheering he got afterward. We got his speech right from the radio by shorthand. They heard it all over the State too. We’ve had wires from papers from one end of the State to the other asking for dope. “Now, in the face of that, do you want to make an ass of the whole party by a statement that your keynote dinner was so wet that you were all too drunk to hear the key speech?” “Did your reporter hear that speech?” Quaid demanded in bewilderment. “No. The boys all left when Forsythe got through. The A. P. man stayed, but he must have been drunk and gone to sleep. We couldn’t get anything out of him.” “Listen, boss,” Barney broke in. “Somebody double crossed us, unless the spooks have been at work. I bet Hammond played in with the broadcasting station some way and got ’em to let him break in. The whole mischief’s been done for tonight. We better lie low till we find out how it was done.” “Barney’s right,” Quaid decided, and stalked out. Barney was right when he said the mischief had been done. But the following day only increased the mystery of how. First thing in the morning, the fatal morning of the county conventions, Quaid began getting wires from leaders all over the State, asking instructions, and confirming the fact that every radio user outside of the dinner hall had heard the speech.