“Let it then,” said Peters, stubbornly. “I don’t want it. Why should I take something my wife didn’t want? There must be something wrong about it somewhere. Why should I make money by the death of my wife and child? If she were here to share it--if only my boy were here--” He broke down for the first time since his arrest, and sobbed, throwing his arms over his head in a wild burst of grief. Finally he composed himself. “I’ll go back to my trade,” he said, simply. “Hard work is the best thing for me now.” He turned to Lanagan and their hands met in a long, hard clasp. “If it can be done, I’ll turn the money over to you, Mr. Lanagan.” “Thanks, Peters, no. I’ve only done a newspaperman’s work; what the _Enquirer_ pays me to do. You’re all man; and it’s been a pleasure to clear you.” To Leslie, again the master newspaper mind, calculating the minutes swiftly slipping around after midnight, he snapped: “It’s in your hands now, Chief. Keep everybody here and stall around for an hour or so, while Norton and I give the town a story that, if it doesn’t make a case in court against Fogarty and Bannerman, will at least chase Fogarty out of town till it blows over and beat Bannerman out of the nomination for Superior Judge. His name comes before the convention to-morrow night. We’re off.” Then to me as we swiftly pelted out of the room: “Key up to it, Norrie; this is some stem-winder!” VIII AT THE END OF THE LONG NIGHT VIII AT THE END OF THE LONG NIGHT “Extra! Extra!” in shrill diminuendo awakened Jack Lanagan from the very heart of his morning slumber. The morning paper man sleeps late and nothing short of cataclysm or the cry of an extra is likely to awaken him. Lanagan was from his bed to the window in a lanky leap hailing the newsboy. It was the _Evening Record_ with a “screamer” head and two hundred words of black-face type. Lanagan swept through it in a comprehensive flash. With more speed than was his custom he thereupon dressed. “_Swanson!_” he said. “Gad, what a story!” He sat on the edge of the bed, more leisurely to roll a brown-paper cigarette and read the story more carefully. Stripped of flaring headlines, it was as follows: “All hope for the safety of Captain Robert Swanson, the retired millionaire shipping man who disappeared on Wednesday evening, was dissipated this morning, shortly after 9.30 o’clock, when the body of the well-known philanthropist was found in a subcellar room in the notorious Palace Hotel in Chinatown. “Death was due to strangulation. “Life had probably been extinct three days, and it is the police theory that Captain Swanson went directly to the hotel or was lured there on the evening of his disappearance. “His watch and valuables were found on his person. “So far as a hasty examination could discover no one saw him enter the hotel, which bears an evil reputation and is occupied by the lowest type of denizen of Chinatown and the Barbary Coast.