"Lester," he said, "I'm sorry, but I'll have to leave you. I've got to set my subterranean machinery to work, and I'm afraid I can't take you with me, much as I'd like to. The agents I'll have to use are shy of strangers. Besides, I see you're getting sleepy." "Yes," I confessed; "I am. I don't see how you hold up so well. Good-night, then; and good luck. I hope you'll win out." "Oh, I shall," he said confidently. "You take the cab. I'll use the elevated. It's quicker, and every moment counts," and he waved me good-bye. CHAPTER XXIII The Story It was not until I unfolded my _Record_ at the breakfast table, next morning, that I fully appreciated Godfrey's tremendous activity. I had always known, of course, that he was energetic, indefatigable, and fertile of expedient, but his results, remarkable as they often were, were usually achieved with such apparent ease that I had never suspected the extent of the downright hard work which lay back of them. Now, as I looked over the paper before me, I understood and wondered. I had left him at ten o'clock the night before, with the mystery still unsolved and seemingly unsolvable, for the only clue in his possession had led him to a blank wall. Yet here before me was the story. An entire page was devoted to it--and an astonishing story it was, written with verve and vividness, complete in every detail, and illustrated with photographs and sketches of all the scenes and characters. There was the Kingdon cottage, the grave in the cellar, the Kingdon sisters, the murdered man, the pearl-handled revolver--even the coroner and the chief of police. Many of the photographs had, of course, been collected the day before, and some of them, no doubt, had been used in the afternoon edition, but here they were welded into a homogeneous whole, complete and satisfying. I could fancy the city editors of the other morning papers turning green with envy as they read it. And looking at the story, I understood, more clearly than I had ever done, the wide appeal of the yellow press--it paid for the best talent in the market; it handled its matter in a way to attract attention; it told its stories in a style incisive and easily comprehensible, and added the visual appeal of pictures, which gave the supreme touch of reality. _And_ it got the news. Abstractly, I am anything but an admirer of the yellow press; concretely, I have often found that to get the last detail of any event--more especially of any event with a sensational or mysterious side--I must have recourse to its columns, just as I had recourse to them now.