Hackley, following the pointing finger, peered over the green silk curtain out into the darkening street. A young man, tall and rather thin, in a blue suit and wide gray-felt hat, was walking slowly and with a slight limp up the cross street, evidently heading for the Palace Hotel. The two men watched him intently, in a moment of perfect silence. Then the boss, who was not without a certain dramatic sense, said slowly: "_Mamie Orrick's old friend_!" A baleful light leaped into Hackley's eyes. He broke away from the bar with a movement that was like a wrench, and started for the door. "I'll fix him," he muttered dourly. "Fix him _good_." But Ryan, who wanted something much better than that, sprang around the bar like lightning, and caught Hackley roughly by the shoulder, at the door. "What, here in the square!" he hissed sharply. "With the po-lice in sight a'most! Why, you fool, it'll mean the pen for you as sure as your name's Jim Hackley!" Hackley paused, his resolution unsettled by the other's superior knowledge of the law. "No, no, Jim--it won't do," went on Ryan with bland decisiveness. "What you want is the two of them together, hey?--on a nice dark stretch o' road, and old Orrick and a few good fellows along to help. You ain't the only one that's got it in for Stanhope, are you? An' you want Maginnis too, I guess? Come on in the orfice and talk about it over a seegar." CHAPTER XV IN WHICH VARNEY DOES NOT PAY A VISIT, BUT RECEIVES ONE Coligny Smith had told the truth. Peter Maginnis had bought the _Gazette_, and the _Cyprianl's_ troubles, from this source at any rate, were at an end. Varney found the new proprietor at the hotel, completing a hurried supper, and Peter hailed him with astonishment and delight. All afternoon he had been bursting with his great news, eager to get word of it to Varney on the yacht. But there had been no trustworthy messenger to send; his own time had been rilled to overflowing, with contracts, bills of sale and deeds; and, besides, his certain knowledge that everything was all right made it seem a minor matter that Varney should know it too. "But what the deuce," he exclaimed at once, "brings you at this hour to the Palace Hotel and Restaurant?" "I, too," quoted Varney, "have not been idle." As they walked back to the _Gazette_ building, where Peter had still various details to attend to, he gave a terse epitome of his afternoon's experiences. At the news that he, too, had sought to buy the paper which was so determinedly on their trail, Peter chuckled and started to speak; but when he learned in the next sentence that Hammerton had their secret at his mercy, his face grew suddenly grave. "The rub is," he summed up meditatively, "he may take his walking-papers rather than let go of such a scoop as that. Of course, he knows that the New York papers would trample each other to death trying to snatch it away from him. However, we can fix it somehow. We've got to--that's all."