"Going to get out an extra! It's the hottest story that ever came down the pike! It'll make the _Express_, and"--he seized her hand in his grimy ones, his eyes blazed, and an exultant laugh leaped from his deep chest--"and we'll simply rip this old town wide open!" Katherine stared at him in bewilderment. "Oh, won't this wake the old town up!" he murmured to himself. He dropped into his chair, jerked some loose copy paper toward him, and seized a pencil. "Now quick! The details!" "You mean--you are going to print this?" she stammered. "Didn't I say so!" he answered sharply. "Then you really had nothing to do with Mr. Blake's----" "Oh, hell! I beg pardon. But this is no time for explanations. Come, come"--he rapped his desk with his knuckles--"don't you know what getting out an extra is? Every second is worth half your lifetime. Out with the story!" Katherine sank rather weakly into her chair, beginning to see new things in this face she had so lately loathed. "The fact of the matter is," she confessed, "I guess I stated my information a little more definitely than it really is." "You mean you haven't the facts?" "I'm afraid not. Not yet." "Nothing definite I could hinge a story on?" She shook her head. "I didn't come prepared for--for things to take this turn. It would spoil everything to have this made public before I had my case worked up." "Then there's no extra!" He flung down his pencil and sprang up. "Nothing doing, Billy," he called to Harper, who that instant opened the door; "go on back with you." He began to walk up and down the little office, scowling, hands clenched in his trousers' pockets. After a moment he stopped short, and looked at Katherine half savagely. "I suppose you don't know what it means to a newspaper man to have a big story laid in his hands and then suddenly jerked out?" "I suppose it is something of a disappointment." "Disappointment!" The word came out half groan, half sneer. "Rot! If you were waiting in church and the bridegroom didn't show up, if you were----oh, I can't make you understand the feeling!" He dropped back into his chair and scratched viciously at the copy paper with his heavy black pencil. She watched him in a sort of fascination, till he abruptly looked up. Suspicion glinted behind the heavy glasses. "Are you sure, Miss West," he asked slowly "that this whole affair isn't just a little game?" "What do you mean?" "That your whole story is nothing but a hoax? Nothing but a trick to get out of a tight hole by calling another man a thief?" Her eyes flashed. "You mean that I am telling a lie?" "Oh, you lawyers doubtless have a better-tasting word for it. You would call it, say, a 'professional expedient.'" She was still not sufficiently recovered from her astonishment to be angry. Besides, she felt herself by an unexpected turn put in the wrong regarding Bruce.