"I haven't time now to try to find out who gabbled," snapped back Mr. Foxman; "there are things more important to consider. About half-past seven to-night--that was when I first tried to reach you from down here at the office--I got wind that Blake's crowd had found out about our surprise and were getting busy. That was what I'd been afraid of, as I told you. In the fear that they might try to enjoin us if we held off publication any longer I gave orders to slam the story into the early-mail edition that went to press twenty minutes ago. And now--now when the mischief is done--when thousands of papers are already printed--I find out that we've committed criminal libel, and the worst kind of criminal libel--not against Blake--we are safe enough there--but against Eli Godfrey, Senior, one of the biggest lawyers in this town. In your story you accused him of being one of the lawyers who helped to frame this deal. That's what you did!" "Yes--but--why--but"--stammered Singlebury--"but, Mr. Foxman, Eli Godfrey, Senior, was the man. He was--wasn't he? All my information was----" "It was his son, Eli Godfrey, Junior, his partner in the firm," declared Mr. Foxman, lying beautifully and convincingly. "That's who it was. The father had nothing to do with it; the son everything. You got the whole thing twisted. I've snatched the forms back and I'm throwing the story out of the second edition and filling the hole with a Washington story that we happened to have handy. So your story probably won't be in the edition that you will see. But that doesn't help much--if any. We've kept the libel out of our local circulation, but it's already in the early mails and we can't catch up with it or stop it there. It's too late to save us or to save you." "To save me?" "That's what I said. I guess you don't know what the laws against criminal libel in this state are? _The Clarion_ will be sued to the limit, that's sure. But, as the man who wrote the story, you can be sent to the penitentiary under a criminal prosecution for criminal libel. Do you understand--to the penitentiary? I'm liable, too, in a way of course--anybody who had anything to do with uttering or circulating the false statement is liable. But you are in worse than the rest of us." In his room at the other end of the wire panic gripped poor Singlebury. With a feeling that the earth had suddenly slumped away from under his feet he clung desperately to the telephone instrument. He had accepted this terrifically startling disclosure unquestioningly. Why should he question it? "But if--if there was no malice--if the mistake was made innocently and in ignorance----" he babbled. In his place in the club telephone booth Mr. Foxman, interpreting the note of fright in the reporter's voice, grinned to himself. Singlebury, it was plain, didn't know anything about libel law. And Singlebury, it was equally plain, was accepting without question or analysis all that he was hearing.