From what Mr. Foxman had said Singlebury rather expected Mr. Murtha, at the outset, might be reluctant to furnish the coupling links between the legal chicanery and the financial skullduggery which would make this projected merger a conspicuous scandal in a district of conspicuous industrial scandals; had rather expected Mr. Murtha's mind might require crafty sounding and skillful pumping. Here Singlebury was agreeably surprised, for, it being first understood that Mr. Murtha's name was nowhere to appear in what Singlebury might write, Mr. Murtha proved to be as frank as frank could be. Indeed, when it came to a disclosure of the rôles played by two of his associates, from whom now he was parting, Mr. Murtha, the retiring member of this well-known house of corporation law, betrayed an almost brutal frankness. They, doubtlessly, would have called it rank professional treachery--base, personal ingratitude and a violation of all the ethics of their highly ethical calling. Mr. Murtha, looking at things through very different glasses, put it on the high ground of his duty, as a citizen and a taxpayer, to the general health and the general morality of the general public. It is this same difference of opinion which makes neighbourhood quarrels, lawsuits and wars between nations popular in the most civilised climes. In all essential details, the tale, when Murtha was through with Singlebury and Singlebury was through with Murtha, stood completed and connected, jointed and doubt-proof. That second evening Singlebury spent in his room, arranging his data in their proper sequence and mapping out in his head his introduction. Next day, all day, he wrote his story. Just before dusk he drew the last page out of his typewriter and corrected it. The job was done and it was a good job. It ran four columns and over. It stripped that traffic grab to its bare and grinning bones. It was loaded with bombshells for the proposed merger and with the shrapnel of certain criminal prosecution for the men behind that merger, and most of all for John W. Blake, the man behind those other and lesser men. To Singlebury, though, it was even more than this. To him it was a good story, well written, well balanced, happily adjusted, smartly phrased; and on top of this, it was the most precious jewel of a reporter's treasure casket. It was a cracking, smashing, earth-shaking, exclusive--scoop, as they would have called it out yonder on the Coast where he came from--beat, as they would call it here in New York. Personally, as per instructions, he put the finished manuscript into the hands of Mr. Foxman, in Mr. Foxman's office, then stood by while Mr. Foxman ran through the opening paragraphs.