“Nothing,” Sponley spoke shortly. It annoyed him to think that he was showing the effect of the pounding he had taken that day. He turned to go into the house, then stopped and called after the man:-- “Wait a minute. Haven’t you got what money you’ve saved in Bagsbury’s bank?” “Yes, sir.” “I guess you’ll do well to take it out first thing to-morrow morning. I don’t know that they’re going to fail, but you’d better be on the safe side.” He dismissed the man with a nod and went in to the telephone. He called up the Herald building and asked for Mr. Hauxton. “Can you come out to my house at once, on a matter of some importance?” he asked. “It’s not the sort of thing I want to discuss over the ’phone.” The financial man on the _Herald_ is an important person, unused to being telephoned for in that summary way; but to this request of Sponley’s he replied with alacrity. The Bear greeted him with impressive cordiality. “Have you heard anything to-day, Mr. Hauxton?” he asked when they were seated, “anything that leads you to think that Bagsbury’s bank is in trouble?” The financial reporter mopped his bald spot, and then taking off his spectacles he wiped them nervously. “Have you heard anything of that sort, Mr. Sponley?” A man may attain to certain great eminences, may be a constitutional lawyer, or an archbishop, and still an easy prey to cozenage and false speaking, but he can never be the financial man on a great newspaper. Hauxton, peering wistfully through his powerful spectacle lenses, could see through the skin of the fair-seeming apple of truth, even to the very worm at the core. You would gain nothing by telling an ordinary cock-and-bull story to him; it would never go beyond his ears. Yet, knowing all this, Sponley settled confidently to his task. He did not try to convince the reporter that the bank was really in a dangerous condition; he did not want him to believe that. And there was no question of Hauxton’s actually printing anything in the paper. Hauxton held his highly salaried position because he held the confidence of the big financial men about the city, and he held their confidence because they knew he could hold his tongue. Discretion was his stock in trade. But if Sponley could excite his curiosity sufficiently to set him to making inquiries here and there as to the truth or the bare existence of a rumor that the bank was in trouble, that was enough for the Bear. The rumor would exist by the time Hauxton had asked three men if there were a rumor; and inside of twenty-four hours it would prove itself true.