Rogers watched him enter the elevator, and once more strolled back to the switchboard. “Hey! Wake up. Zimmerlein's just come in. He's stewed and says his friend's a liar. There won't be any court-martial.” The girl yawned. “Say, has that darned old clock stopped, or is it still only ten minutes of two? It's been that for an hour. Never again for me. Next time Pilcher wants to get off till half-past 'leven, he needn't leave a call for me. I'm through accommodating that mutt. My Gawd! Two o'clock, and he swore he'd be here by eleven. I ought to report him. Do a guy like that a favour and he--What was that you said about old Zim-zim? D'you say he was soused?” “No. I said stewed. He's carryin' an egg on an oyster fork. I never saw him drunk before.” At his usual hour for breakfasting, Mr. Zimmerlein briskly entered the dining-room the next morning and seated himself at his customary table near the window. Two morning newspapers lay beside his plate of sliced oranges. His eyes swept the headlines on the front page. A slight frown darkened his brow. He looked again, a little more closely. Then he took up the other paper. A certain eagerness that had been in his eyes when he sat down gave way to something bordering on astonishment. His interest passed quickly to the second, third and fourth pages. There wasn't a line,--not a solitary line about the sinking of the _Elston!_ He had encountered Elberon late in the afternoon of the preceding day. He was going into the club as the other came out. “You will read something great in the morning papers,” Elberson had said guardedly. “Perhaps in the extras tonight.” “I am always reading something great in the newspapers,” he had replied. “They got the _Elston_. Report came about two o'clock. No details. I doubt whether it is known in Washington yet.” But the morning papers had no account of the sinking. Not a word. What did it mean? Could it be possible that _their_ news travelled so much faster than that obtained by the eager, avid Press? Were they even ahead of Washington? Elberon was in a position to know. He never went off half-cocked. There wasn't the least doubt in Zimmerlein's mind that the _Elston_ had been sunk,--but why this amazing failure of the newspapers to---- He started suddenly. Comprehension flooded his brain. His eyes lighted up again. He understood in a flash. Suppressed! The news of the destruction of the _Elston_ with all those vitally important men on board,--Why, of course! It _had_ to be suppressed! Nevertheless, he decided to drop in and see Elberon on his way down town. As for last night's business, if it came to a head at all, it was after the papers had gone to press. Still, he took the time to run through both papers with unusual thoroughness. It was barely possible that a paragraph,--one of those widely spaced paragraphs that always exact attention,--might have stopped the presses at the last minute.